"Fire is an event, not a thing." 

- Leeaundra Keany in Discover Magazine

Before

After

Feral swine II - Another one bites the dust. FYI - These have less cholesterol than store-bought chicken!

 

Feral hogs facts:

• Can run up to 30 mph
• Can jump 5-6 feet high
• Will eat anything and destroy everything - including you.
• Are worth money if caught alive  -  see this news story or Bubba's Bacon Station

Wild Eastern Turkey Flock Flying

Today we saw a large flock of wild Eastern turkey. Click on the link to see them hiding and flying. Happy Thanksgiving! 

Hungry Longhorn staring contests always make one feel a bit small.

That's just hoggone nasty!

One sus scrofa, aka feral hog, gone and 7,999,999 to go. Rob came home this evening and shot one in our backyard with his .45. According to "Hogs in Your Backyard", feral hogs are "are intelligent, secretive, and adaptive ecological generalists that are capable of exploiting a wide variety of both habitats and forage resources." There is that AND they have virtually no predators. We're in a war, people.

Challenge question: 
How many feral hogs will exist in the USA by 2020 if they continue to reproduce at the current estimated rates?

Here's the math - in 1990 there were approximately 500,000 to 2 million - in 2012 there were approximately 3 to 8 million. 

Challenge activity:
Hunt them down now to end the Aporkalypse. Got bacon?

Shooting Butterflies and Hogs

 Going from using an iPhone and shooting pictures of fragile monarch butterflies yesterday, now rare and declining in numbers - see for more . . . 

to using an AK-47 while shooting a giant feral hog (in the bushes) tonight, one of millions taking over 39 states with their threatening rate of reproduction - see for more . . . 

the crazy dichotomy of life becomes pretty clear - and all in the same garden.

Introduction

Welcome to the Ranchin’ With Rob blog! 

After being whisked away from our jobs as police sergeant and teacher, we have embraced an opportunity to retire and move to become Ranch Foreman and assistant on a 3,500 acre ranch near Austin. After this lengthy introduction, this blog will feature random pictures of our new ranching life (mostly nature – from small to big) accompanied by these things: an interesting fact, joke, and/or quote to go with it! My hope is that in sharing some of the things we see/do here, you will enjoy them as well – and maybe even learn a little bit. To protect the ranch owner’s privacy, we’ll call him and her The Mr. & The Mrs., with their family titled as The Family or Family. As for our own family, we have two wonderful sons, Landon and David, and a beautiful daughter-in-law, Erin, who help with the ranching as well.

As Ranch Foreman, Rob has an overseer – we’ll call him Mr. B. He is the Senior Ranch Manager and oversees a ranch in South Texas but comes here often to assist. Mr. B and his wife are here now, in fact, staying in their guest quarters and have had half their family with grandkids and all come here to build a fire, make smores and ride around. They're neat, tough South Texan people who live near the border of Mexico.

We also have two maids that Rob lets in to the Family lodges weekly or bi-weekly to clean. They are locals and are also of a tough variety. One of them is covered in tattoos and lights her match for her cigarette with one hand – very impressive. They clean house as well as she lights her cigarettes, so we're happy.

So what have we been doing? Outside of me working at a local intermediate school and Rob traveling to receive dog handler training and to lead quail hunts, we have been spending the bulk of our efforts working with the kenneled hunting dogs we house here. We have 10 spaniels (all cute and hyper), 3 pointers (2 of them ancient), and a new English setter named Duke. It took us a while to learn all of their names and personalities, but now we see each of them as of much of an individual as our own children. There will be more to come on them later.

It's a big ordeal for Rob to take out each one and work with them every day in preparation for the Family's big traditional Thanksgiving Day hunt, but he enjoys it and I do too. We also spray out their kennels twice a day (dirty job), feed them and medicate or doctor any ones having issues. 

In addition to the dogs, there is the endless mowing and weed eating. Rob is such a perfectionist with landscaping and grass that I have to regularly talk him down from hopping back on the mower and neglecting other things. Born to mow because he was born to ride, I say. I secretly think it makes him feel like he's on the motorcycle again. Shh, don't say anything. A man's gotta have something to ween him off of twenty-one years of riding a motorcycle for a living. Until he gets his first horse, I guess the zero-turn mower is it. I help with much legwork landscaping but let him have the mower.

As well as all of that, Rob is building and repairing much for The Mr. - the roof, bathroom, etc. - and we clean the pool - a BIG job. As of last week, we have one of those robotic pool bottom cleaners, and this girl could not be more grateful. Rob has lovingly named him Bubba. The Family insists on allowing the branches of the surrounding oak trees to cover half the pool with their shade, which is nice, only thing is, the branches are close enough that they send sap and leaves and acorns to the bottom every two seconds so that the pool is never really clean, and it can be maddening for overachievers like us.Thank God for Bubba.  

Lastly, we have several wild barn cats that we feed, a wanna-be-tame donkey, Francis, and a wild mule, Frank, who acts like the type of animal that he is; and who knows how many cattle - we see more every time we ride out there. The cows are starting to separate into mini herds, with each bull claiming his heifers. We'll need to move some of the herd to different lands soon, as this 3,500 acres is not fenced into sections and it's best to give each bull his proper territory so they don't fight. 

As for wildlife, there are many beautiful birds, lizards, and wild turkey here. We also have praying mantises and fireflies, things you rarely see in the city. On the flip side, we have killed two rattlesnakes this week alone - one was 3 feet long. I have also killed three scorpions in our home - of course while walking unsuspectingly to the bathroom in the wee hours of the morning each time - nice midnight surprise. Last week I saw 3 – yes 3 – coral snakes. One was on my back porch and the others by the poolside. There will be more to come on them later – pictures off all of these things, etc.

At our personal ranch house, we also feed and water the 1,400 quail  housed in neighboring pens (another dirty job) in preparation for hunting them with the spaniels, pointers, and setter (hard for this bird lover to swallow). What's sad is that they are becoming tame to my presence, and that is not what you want. If they don't fly when they are brought out for hunting, they will most likely escape and die some kind of awful death from ants, dehydration, or their many predators. To keep them flying, I recently let our rat terrier-chihuahua, Lolita, run loose in their pen all to watch her stand still and just blink at them. She’s obviously a senior citizen doggie. A typical trick is to put a small terrier (great hunters) of some kind in a quail pen with a muzzle and just let them go wild. It teaches the quail to be afraid of dogs, which is best if they are to be good hunting quail. It sounds cruel, but really, they were made for people to eat them. Besides, at least they get to live in a luxurious pen with a constant buffet for most of their lives – unlike the birds ending up at KFC. Plus, life does go in cycles.

We also take care of our inherited three "real dogs" that came with our personal home and its surroundings. We call them the real dogs because they live entirely outdoors - year round - they drink water from the property ponds, roam at night and sleep during the day, hunt as a pack and return with cactus needles, which they won't let you remove. In other words, they are tough. They still get their shots and we feed them daily, but that doesn't woosify them - it only fuels their natural "dogness" to embrace its wild side even more, with less interference from disease and hunger.

First, there is Big Boy, a gentle giant of a dog that appears to be part Irish wolfhound and part something with long hair and a sweet temperament, like a collie. He is our protector and is alpha of all alpha dogs here even though he wouldn't do so much as even scratch a human. He did, however, tear the hide off of Frank's (the mule) side when Big Boy knocked Frank against a tree in an effort to stop Frank from killing him. Big Boy roams the house at night, leading his small pack into long, bellowing howls that ward off hogs and coyotes that used to either tear up the yard or kill the other animals here to claim the territory. Big Boy got here by just showing up on the front porch of the Family lodges one day. Just like a guardian angel, he came. People dump dogs out front of the Star Ranch gate regularly, so he was most likely dropped off here. This is his place now and we just happened to come to his home - that's how we see it.

Next, there's Mini, a fluffy, pint-sized chow chow mix who was dumped out of the window of a passing truck, injured, and rescued by the former ranch foreman and his family. She is the most recent addition to the ranch and was skittish toward us and our two dogs, so we tried to find her a home on Craigslist. Nobody replied to our ad and it's a good thing. She is infatuated with Big Boy and they are inseparable, even though Big Boy occasionally growls her away when his old age starts to creep out during daytime naps and other moments of his need for stillness. Now that we've had her a while, she has become one of the sweetest and most playful companions for us and our dogs.

Then, there's Josh. He's a medium-sized squatty version of some kind of yellow lab mix with an adorable, but severe underbite and oddly narrow jaw who sports a perpetual spiky, ridge-like hairdo streaking down the back of his neck. Josh is one-of-a-kind. He is young enough to be frisky and hang tough with Big Boy but he is old enough to not be annoying to other dogs when they just want to lie in the sun. He is often found left behind by Big Boy and Mini, often acting as if he was once a house dog but refusing to come inside no matter what we try to do. He was left here by a ranch hand family that worked this property for thirty years until the father, Pablo, died a couple years ago. They left Josh here, so he joined the pack and stays by our home now. If I had to describe Josh in one word besides endearing, I would have to say sneaky. Josh is fond of traveling and has been known to sneak into trucks only to be discovered when the traveler is already too far from home to return him. He also has a special sneaky stalk-walk that he has mastered and practices regularly on the poolside cat and any insect or lizard in sight. He never pursues his prey entirely, but merely walks toward it in ultra-mega slow mo style that makes you laugh to see it. Once discovered, he slyly walks as slowly backwards, then approaches his prey from another angle and begins the process from the beginning, spending close to an hour each time I have caught him in action - or is it? Josh is precious. 

Finally, we have our two dogs, Chloe (boxer) and Lolita (ratcha). Introducing them to this pack was a huge, two week ordeal that has ended in peace. Rob had to pull a Cesar Milan move to keep them all from fighting. Our dogs have no fence here and there are many coyotes and other things that could harm them, so we require their obedience daily. So far, with much hard work and a mild shock collar episode for Chloe, they are staying nearby and seem happier than ever here. There is something liberating to animals that have no visible fence and choose to stay with you. They are with you because you are their pack leader. This understanding runs deep here and never existed in our houses with a fenced yard. 

There is already so much that has happened here that I will most likely only share part of it, and little by little with more photographs than words after this – but I do hope the many friends, co-workers, students, and family we no longer see often will stay in touch and feel our love as I share bits of our ranch-time musings here on Ranchin’ With Rob. I will hopefully even hear back from some of you!

Time to hit the hay,

Christie/Mrs. Williams