Jumper, a wild horse famous for jumping fences in North Carolina, has died

"A beloved wild horse known for his disdain for fences has died. The stallion was named JW, and he lived in North Carolina's Outer Banks. But JW was fondly known by the nickname Jumper because of his habit of jumping the fence at a local park - a skill that he passed on to other horses, too. Jumper lived well into his 30s, which is a long life for a horse. But he fell ill, and one of the people who helped take care of him in his final days was Meg Puckett of the Corolla Wild Horse Fund."

"So he - there's a little county park, you know, where the horses live up in that habitat. There are houses, but there's no paved roads, and so it's very rough. But there is a - there's a county park, and there's about a 3-1/2-foot-high fence around it, and that's primarily to keep vehicles out of the park. But Jumper jumped it (laughter). And so that was a very common phone call that we would get - you know, 'cause sometimes every day, multiple times a day - that there's a horse stuck in the park. And so we would always have to, you know, explain to people, he's not stuck. He jumped in, and he can jump out. So..."

"You know, we would go in and kind of move him out, open the gate and get him to go out, and as soon as we turned our back, he would be jumping right back in there."

JW, nicknamed Jumper, was a stallion living on the Outer Banks in North Carolina. Jumper routinely cleared a roughly 3.5-foot-high county park fence that was intended mainly to keep vehicles out. The habit produced frequent calls about a supposedly "stuck" horse, though Jumper routinely jumped both into and out of the park and influenced similar behavior in other horses. The habitat includes houses without paved roads and is otherwise rough. Jumper lived into his 30s, an advanced age for a horse, but later fell ill and received care from the Corolla Wild Horse Fund.

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