Wild Ponies Make Annual Swim in Dense Fog For Chincoteague, Virginia Fire Department
CHINCOTEAGUE, Va. (AP) -- Between 150 and 200 wild ponies made the annual swim to the shore of this resort island in dense fog Wednesday morning.
''You couldn't see the crowd,'' said Evelyn Shotwell, the chamber of commerce's office manager. ''It was really foggy.''
The hot weather in recent days _ a high of nearly 100 degrees was expected Wednesday _ didn't appear to reduce the crowd of thousands of onlookers.
Shotwell said the town of about 3,500 seemed to be crowded with about the same number of people as the 40,000 who came for last year's event.
It took the ponies about five minutes to cross the 200-yard channel from Assateague, Md., a barrier island in the Atlantic Ocean, shortly after 8:30 a.m., Shotwell said.
The ponies were then herded through town to a corral on the carnival grounds, where they will be sold at auction Thursday.
Yearlings and younger are sold to thin the herd and raise money for the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company, which cares for the ponies.
Ponies that aren't sold, as well as those donated back to the fire department, will swim back to roam again on Assateague, a national wildlife refuge.
The pony swim was made famous by Marguerite Henry's 1947 novel ''Misty of Chincoteague.'' This year's swim was the 80th organized by the fire department.
