ABOVE: Wild horses on Shackleford Banks, North Carolina
ASHLEY YEAGER
Update (September 24): The wild horses on the barrier islands appear unscathed after hurricane Florence made landfall September 14, Southern Living reports.
A stallion with a chestnut coat and blonde mane pins his ears back and lowers his head. Almost instantly, another stallion nearby falls in line.
“Did you see that little interaction?” Sue Stuska, a biologist with the National Park Service, asks an onlooking tour group. “Those behaviors help establish dominance.”
We walk on, wading through marshy water and lifting our cameras to snap photos of the wild horses. A slight wind blows, and the air smells and tastes salty. There are no lush, green pastures here on Shackleford Banks, North Carolina, a thin strip of dunes and marshes at the southern end of the Outer Banks. Yet a few hundred feet away, three stallions and two mares nibble at ...
