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I was sort of enjoying the juxtaposition of being able to work on a gallinero in the early hours of the day and then driving into my office in town to sell political ads that afternoon. Though separate and quite diverse activities, there's a sameness to them I haven't exactly explained to myself -- something about chickens and coyotes.
Pues, never mind. What I really wanted to talk about was the cool mornings, the weather other parts of the country would more likely call fall than winter.
It has been good hammer-swinging weather and there's been a good bit of that going on to finish a duck house and its new metal roof.
The baby chicks we bought as day-olds have feathered and plumped out, as have the ducklings. The big hens we got from the rancher down the road are beautiful, a wonderful addition to the barnyard scenario that unfolds every morning when we let them loose to free-roam forage so they can lay yard eggs -- jard eggs, some will call them.
When I stepped from the house one recent morning, I was greeted by the noise of a massive aircraft moving low overhead. It happened so quickly and so loudly that I thought it might have been a Blackhawk helicopter and my favorite federales making their presence known. I was mistaken. It was a King Air dumping rabies vaccine for coyotes, a good thing, especially recalling that until a couple of years ago the City of Laredo and Zapata County had health department leadership that believed that destroying the coyote population (trapping, poisoned bait, or shooting from helicopters) was the answer to keeping ranchland rabies from infecting city pets. They finally figured out city pets should be vaccinated.
Veering back from that aside, we've gone about doing the things you do when the weather has turned cool and the hunters have domain over the pastures -- tree trimming and picking up wimmin's wood in the nearby areas, carpentry, and little plumbing repairs.
There's a way the world looks, you've heard me say, after the first frost has settled on the ranchlands and the earth takes on a holding pattern until spring. Only the winter weeds are really green, and all else looks a bit toasted and dry. Still, though, there's a beauty to it and the way the earth smells this time of the year, the way the truck moves along the sand of the senderos. The cattle and horses wear a bit of a shaggy coat, as though portending colder days.
This has been incredible weather for walks and for listening for the calls of migratory birds. Just back from a foray into the nearby brush, I've had the good fortune to watch a covey of ducks take flight from our pond -- not the usual suspects, but they flushed too fast for a good look. And just after them a sandhill crane and a heron launched from the tops of trees still inundated by the heavy rains of December.
In that sudden burst of energy from the water and the treetops, in the thrush and thrump-thrump of beating wings on the soft azure of the early morning sky, I feel my own heartbeat and I know my luck.