Like the swallows at Capistrano,
AWOL ruminants return to the Santa María Ranch

By Ma. Eugenia Guerra

What a rich, thick spring it has been out here on the ranchlands -- hip high grasses, perfumed wafts of the blossoms of huisache and blackbrush, damp earth, and the time to enjoy the cool weather and feel it register in contrast to the memory of the last bleak, dry summer.
The fallwork at fences, senderos, and general clean-up and maintenance have allowed a contemplative respite to pick and choose what the next work will be on the ranch. Nothing presses to be done. There are choices.
Spring cleaning has rendered the hen houses and nests in good repair, and the girls are laying well again. The pullets have filled out and the ducklings have lost their eiderdown to feathers. The cattle are in a remote pasture of plentiful grasses.
Here at el pie del rancho, we've enlisted a small herd of visiting goats to mow down the fenced areas around our houses. This is the second year running that a herd of goats shows up to spend the last days of winter and the first of spring at Santa María Ranch. It was a year ago a ragtag herd of goats walked cross country up the Arroyo San Francisco and into one of our pastures. They stayed on the ranch until we found their owner through an ad in this newspaper.
Almost to the day, another herd, this one smaller and much more docile, has shown up at the ranch. They were herded onto the property by an accompanying shepherd dog, a gentle and good-natured animal. They appear to be well-bred animals who are amenable to lunch on the surrounding tall grasses.
As we wait to find the owners of the AWOL ruminants, adjustments have been made by those who live here. The presence of the goats bears on it the unmistakably ripe fragrance of them, and that takes a little getting used to first thing in the morning. Separated by a roll of wire mesh, Chico plays tag up and down the fence line between him and the shepherd dog and his charges.
My son and his wife Rosa Elia were home for the weekend, which we spent at the hearth fire and in the barn finishing long conversations we had begun the day before in San Antonio. All of us worked quietly one afternoon at seeding a spot that could erode badly if it didn't sprout cover before a hard rain.
In other news, on the evening that followed a sunny afternoon in which the weather broke from damp to warm, we came face to face with a rattlesnake that had enjoyed sunning on the brick floor of the veranda. It sounded its unmistakable alert when I stepped onto the porch, a dry rattle that in me has never failed to inspire fear. It was just after nightfall, and we could hear it but could not see it. When I finally spotted it in the beam of the flashlight, I was amazed as I always am at just how well rattlesnakes blend into the color of sand and the cover of the ground. We do not shoot snakes in the brush, but we do when they come near the house or the dogs. So we dispatched the visitor with the little .410, skinned and eviscerated it, and served it up the next day with a meal of lamb and buffalo cooked over a mesquite fire.
Snake jitters aside, there's a way the ranch looks and smells in spring, the landscape a portal for passage through the nurturing and eternal rite of rejuvenation, a passage through which you understand you have collected your heart again.