By Tyler Marks
How do you tell someone you spent a night with the famous Chincoteague wild ponies? Maybe I should just learn to keep my mouth shut. When I started to tell Mr. Boswell, my journalism teacher, about my overnight during Pony Penning in July, he said, “Sit right down at your computer and write what you are telling me.”
So here is how I happened to spend a night with the ponies, something Mr. Boswell said tens of thousands of teenagers across the country would like to do.
My Dad, Walter Marks, has been one of the saltwater cowboys for nearly 27 years. As most local people know, the cowboys go into the wilderness at Assateague Island three times a year and drive the ponies into corrals where they are cared for by their veterinarian, Dr. Charlie Cameron. After the roundup in July the young ponies are auctioned off to make money for the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company, which actually owns them. I helped out on the day of the auction, too.
Dad just retired as a trooper with the Virginia State Police but he hasn’t said anything about giving up his cowboy duties.
Anyway, after the ponies, all 150 of them plus their offspring, were rounded up in July, they were driven into the big holding pen on the curve on Beach Road. Lots of people come and look at them and those who plan to try to buy one the next day at the auction might get their eye on the one they want.
As evening settled in, my Dad got the job, along with his friend Mr. Will Hines, another cowboy, and me, to stay with the ponies through the night.
I have been working with the ponies since I was a little boy, but this was my first time spending the night with them. It was our job to make sure nothing bad happened during the night before the auction.
I started off as a member of the Pony Patrol. The job of the Pony Patrol is to keep the aisles clear of people. Then, in case one of the wranglers gets hurt really bad they can be brought through the isle to a waiting ambulance.
This past year I got to wrangle the ponies. When I say wrangle I mean bring them out to be where the buyers can see them, holding them as still as possible while the auctioneer calls on the bidders.
Anyone who has been at the pen when the ponies are driven in by the riders can tell you it is not a quiet time. The stallions all have their own families, called bands that they keep together on the range. But in the pen all the bands get mixed together.
While I was there at the south pen, the stallions sometimes fought each other, rearing up on their hind legs and trying to bite each other. Then after a few minutes everything started to calm down. I could even hear frogs and crickets as darkness fell. Assateague is known as a buggy place during the summer. The bugs were bad when we first got there, then they started to calm down, and later they went away.
As we began our long night, I could swear I heard one of the horses kick another horse. It kind of sounded like a bone cracked. I don’t know if that’s what it was for sure. You can’t always tell about sounds in the night. I went and told my Dad and we went to check on the ponies. Then I shined my flashlight on a pony on the ground.
I was not sure what was wrong with it but I told my Dad. He wanted me to go and take a look at it. I went over to the pony, it was not moving. I kicked the pony softly on the hoof, and it jumped up and ran away. It must have been sleeping.
When we got through checking, we went back to the car and sat down for a little while, then I fell asleep. I woke up at about midnight and realized that my Dad had gone again to check on the horses. I got out of the car to find him, then I got back in the car and slept through the rest of the night.
The next morning I woke up to find visitors already there. When more fire department staff got there my Dad, Mr. Hines, and I went to breakfast. Then we came back to help with the feeding and watering. When everything was done we all went home.
Tyler is a 9th grade student this semester at Nandua High School on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, not far from Assateague Island. He is the son of Wanda Marks, a middle school nurse, and Walter Marks, a veteran Saltwater Cowboy. Tyler, always at his Dad’s side, is fast becoming an experienced rider, and will have many more Chincoteague pony stories to tell in the years ahead. This column was originally written for The Nandua News, the school newspaper. Now on www.wildponytales.com, it will be read by thousands of viewers all over the world. The editor in chief of the site is Elizabeth Fread, editor of The Nandua News last year, who is now a freshman at Nandua High. Her sister, Kristen, is editor of the paper this year.