A well-known wild stallion on the northern Outer Banks died this week after consuming contaminated water, the fourth horse lost to the herd in the same way over the last two years.
“Taco” stood out among the wild mustangs roaming the northern beaches in Currituck County due to a large lump on his hip, a sterile abscess he’d had for years.
The Corolla Wild Horse Fund, which manages the herd, monitored Taco’s lump closely, but it never impacted his quality of life. The fund’s veterinarian determined the horse died from consuming contaminated water, though exactly what bacteria involved hasn’t been determined.
Herd manager Meg Puckett said changing weather patterns, in part, seem to be causing an increase in intestinal illness and deaths among the horses. Two others died early this year after being infected with mayfly larva in drinking water. Others have been infected with pythiosis, or “swamp cancer,” leading to infections from standing in contaminated water. Cold winters with hard freezes tend to keep the harmful bacteria in the water in check, but that hasn’t happened in several years.
“We’re not seeing hard freezes in the winter anymore. Our weather patterns are changing,” Puckett said. “We’re seeing torrential rains and floods, followed by droughts. The extremes of these weather patterns have an impact.”
Since Hurricane Matthew in 2016, the northern beach communities are also seeing water standing in places for a lot longer than ever before, Puckett said.
Human impact plays a role, too. The Outer Banks has seen record visitation over the last two years.
“The fact of the matter is, the more people you have producing waste, the more contamination you’ll see,” she said.
Puckett said her team drove around Taco’s territory Thursday and collected what water they could find for testing, but “there’s not a lot of water to collect right now.”
“We’ve been in a drought and that also limits the amount of water horses have available to them,” she said.
The water samples will be sent for testing next week to determine what led to Taco’s death, though there’s not a whole lot the horse fund can do to make the water safer.
“But having this information on hand at least gives us an idea of which areas might be more problematic than others,” Puckett wrote in a Facebook post Friday morning. “It allows us to keep an eye on the horses in those areas for signs of intestinal distress or other issues. Thankfully this week we have seen all of the horses Taco has recently been associated with and they all seem fine.”
At eight years old, Taco was still a very young mustang, but he managed to steal a large group of mares from another stallion this summer.
“We were so hopeful that he would produce some offspring; perhaps he still will … there’s always a chance one of those mares is pregnant, though most of them are quite aged so it’s unlikely,” Puckett said. The loss of his genetics to the herd, which currently stands at 104 wild horses, is devastating, she said.
Taco’s mother is a mare named Kitty Hawk who lives at the horse fund’s rescue farm in Grandy, North Carolina, after being removed from the beach in 2018 for habitually going into False Cape State Park in Virginia. His father, Flint, is still alive and well in the wild.
“Every single loss is a tragedy when you have such a small population to begin with, but some hit a bit harder than others,” Puckett wrote.
Taco had a big personality, and those who live and own property along the off-road beaches became attached to him and helped the horse fund keep an eye out for him.
“He was a permanent member of our staff’s ‘make sure you put eyes on this horse today’ list, and it will take some time for us to break that habit,” Puckett said. “Maybe we will never stop looking for him; it’s hard to believe he’s gone.”
Kari Pugh, karipugh@icloud.com
