The cattle look more like portly pets than free-ranging bovines that endured a punishing summer

By Ma. Eugenia Guerra

Cooler temperatures and two inches of rain have certainly perked up the monte, the livestock, and those of us who live on ranches. We spent a recent morning moving the cattle out of the pastures the deer hunters will favor this season, and we couldn't help but admire cattle that look more like portly pets than free-ranging bovines that endured a punishing summer and early fall.

If it wasn't for the mesquites looking a little bald here and there, you might think this was the beginning of spring and not November, because so much of the monte foliage is bright green and thick, save for the grasses which are sheathed in pallor.

We've mowed more this year than in any year I can remember, and, concurring with Bebe Fenstermaker at the Maverick Ranch in Boerne (see page 59), we've run into more rattlesnakes this year than in others.

I've taken to wearing my Petzl headlamp when I walk outside at night (which always for just a moment makes me feel like a miner), and I listen really well for that dreaded dry whirr-hiss-rattle that can turn even the most docile of us into agile sprinters.

A couple of nice cold snaps would sure put the snakes away for a while and would also do away with scorpions and some of the more fierce critters with which we share our home on the range.

The cooler temperatures, which have not yet dropped much lower than the 50s, besides making fence work more tolerable, have made morning coffee and reading on the porch a delight. Last winter the cattle put on quite a heavy coat, which I thought signaled the onset of a real winter, but the temperatures never really dropped.

The green jays are back, and I'm waiting for the clay robins, whistling ducks, and any other surprise avian visitors that will greet us at the pond or at the feeders all around the ranch house.

I don't know how a change in the seasons can also change perceptions of sound, the way the world looks and smells, or how I feel about something that may have been perplexing to me, but it does. It's been lovely to be idle and contemplative and to enjoy so much the routine late afternoon vueltas around the ranch perimeter.