Wild at Heart

St. Paul's Star Tribune releases, Karen Susan lives in a trailer in the middle of nowhere and loves it. These days, life is all about her "sweeties," - half ton wild horses she's rescued from slaughter.

Just before dusk, the last squint of light pushes hard across a drought hardened, slant of scrub grass, mud and tumbleweeds, stitched in by an endless line of fence posts. Fat prairie dogs scatter from the rattle of a pick-up truck bearing the scars of ranch work; panels kicked in by the bucking of wild animals, mirrors smashed clean off, hood paint gnawed down to the raw metal, windows smeared by the spit of nosy horses.

In the lowland along a day creek bed, wild mahogany colored stallions muscle each other with bared teeth, their manes flying, their hooves hammering the earth. One giant male rears in the low sun and slams against another. A piece of flesh the width of his mouth hangs below a fresh red gash. Karen jumps down from he truck and walks right into the herd. These Gila horses, thought to be direct descendent's of those brought by Spanish Conquistadors.

They have survived relentless desert sun and brittle winters. Sussman, 60, stands 5 feet, 3 inches in her rubber boots. She's a former Scottsdale, Arizona Nurse, and looks like it. "Hi sweethearts," she coos at the 900-pound horses. Two of the largest stallions step up from the herd. "There's my big boys." Sussman leans forward, the one who moments before viciously attacked another.

The people of the Cheyenne River Siox Indian Reservation a lonely barren place in Central South Dakota call Sussman, "the medicine horse lady," or sometimes, "the crazy horse lady," The widespread slaughter of wild horses was banned in 1971. Ranchers and others look at the wild horses as problems, eating crops trampled fields and much more, Sussman strongly protests. The Bureau of Land Management oversees the nations 261 million acres of public land, and argues that controlling the wild horse population is essential to range management; the horses compete with cattle ranchers, oil and logging companies.

There are 31,000 horses in holding pens and 28,000 that run free. Although the number of wild horses that went to slaughter, has dropped significantly. Thousands are still killed for other reasons. Until the final vote is turned, the slaughter of these precious four legged creatures still continues and people like Sussman could use our help in the fight to preserve the wild mustangs.

Sources:
The Star Tribune