Salt makes cocoa sweeter.

Kiang Equus kiang

Sir Alfred James Munnings (1878-1959) - The grey mare

Oil on canvas. 25 x 30 inches, 63.5 x 76.2 cm.

Estimate: £100,000-150,000.

A mother Chincoteague pony nuzzling her newborn foal on Assateague Island. 

Voodoo (1954-1976) was a striking black pinto wild Chincoteague pony stallion with had a sun-bleached mane and a pink nose. At his peak, Voodoo had the largest herd on Assateague with 26 members. He was likely the stallion the cowboys called the Black Duck Drain Horse.

Voodoo even appears in the Misty movie! The movie was filmed in 1960, and it appears the crew used his herd as the one Paul and Grandpa Beebe round up.

Voodoo was a particular favorite of Dr. Ronald Keiper. Keiper, a professor at Pennsylvania State at Mont Alto, studied the behavior and ecology of the wild pony herds on the Maryland and Virginia sides of Assateague for several years, starting in 1975.

Keiper was the first person to systemically study the herds and keep track of individual ponies, giving each band and pony a letter designation and noting their movement and breeding. He and his wife also gave several remarkable ponies nicknames.

As part of his research, he got a front row seat for the fights, drama, and mundane lives of wild ponies like Voodoo.

In January 1977, Keiper discovered Voodoo's remains.

"I found the body of a friend," he wrote in his newspaper column.

According to Keiper, Voodoo was 22 when he died—fairly old age for a wild pony.

This photo was taken by Joseph R. Spies and featured in his book Wild Ponies of Chincoteague, which includes about a hundred great photographs taken from 1967 to 1977. Several of them are of Voodoo!