Part 2
The bull did not flinch.
The caracara steadied itself between his shoulder blades, long yellow legs braced in the red hair. It bent, struck once with its hooked bill, and came up with an engorged tick. The bull’s skin shivered beneath the bird, but he kept his head down.
A second caracara jumped onto his rump. Two more worked the ground around him, picking at parasites that had dropped into the dust. When the first bird moved toward his neck, the bull tilted his head and exposed the fold behind his ear.
Ana lifted the binoculars again.
“He knows what they’re doing,” Linda whispered.
“Or he’s too weak to object,” Ana said, but her voice had lost its edge.
For nearly seven minutes, the birds worked. They did not swarm him or strip him clean. They chose the largest, easiest ticks, jostling one another, sometimes abandoning the bull to chase a grasshopper. One hopped down the length of his spine with the solemn gait of a small official inspecting a road.
Emilio remembered being twelve in the south pasture, his boots not yet reaching the ground from Agustín’s tailgate. Three caracaras had landed on a resting cow, and his grandfather had touched Emilio’s knee to keep him still. Mira. Let them work.
He had not remembered the patience of that morning until now. He had remembered only the lesson.
Ana put one hand on the fence when Emilio stepped closer. “Don’t.”
“I’m outside the trap.”
“You’re also about to turn this into proof.”
“You can see them.”
“I can see opportunistic birds eating accessible parasites. That may give him relief. It is not a treatment plan, and it does not tell us what those ticks may have already done.”
The caracara on the bull’s neck tore loose another tick. A small bead of blood appeared. The bird took it too.
Emilio’s satisfaction thinned. “I didn’t say we wouldn’t treat him.”
“You told Mom you were waiting for the birds.”
He glanced at Linda, who said, “You said it in 2022. I retain evidence.”
That year, Emilio had reduced routine whole-herd treatments after noticing they no longer gave the control they once had. With Ana’s reluctant help, he had begun counting ticks on a sample of cattle and treating according to need. The caracaras had become more frequent in the pastures after that, though nobody knew how much of the change came from parasites, rain, grazing, or the birds simply finding the ranch again. What Emilio remembered was the sight of them returning. What Ana remembered was the monitoring sheet she had made him promise to use.
The birds lifted without warning, one after another, and settled in the mesquite above the bull. Ana closed her bag.
“Now we work.”
The quarantine trap connected to a narrow catch pen through a hinged panel. Emilio placed cubes in a rubber feed tub, opened the panel from outside, and backed away. The bull smelled the feed but did not rise. Ana watched for another minute. “His breathing is faster.”
“Heat?”
“Could be. Could be anemia. Could be pain. We examine him where he is if we have to, but I’d rather have a barrier between us and fourteen hundred pounds.”
Emilio carried two more tubs into the catch pen, moving slowly enough that the bull followed him with one eye. He shook cubes once and left the lane. The bull pushed himself up. His hindquarters came last, trembling hard, but the smell of molasses drew him through the panel.
He entered the chute without a shout or a strike. When the head gate closed, he leaned against it as if grateful to have something holding him up.
Up close, the infestation defeated numbers. Ana stopped trying to count individual ticks and marked body zones instead: ears, neck folds, brisket, belly, tail head. She photographed representative clusters for the medical record, drew blood, checked his temperature, listened to his heart, and pressed a thumb against his gum. The pale place stayed pale too long.
“He’s severely anemic,” she said. “I’ll know how severely when I run this.”
Emilio stood at the chute’s side with one hand on the bull’s shoulder. Under the crusted dirt, the skin was hot.
“Can you fix it?”
“We can remove and kill ticks. We can support him while his body replaces what he’s lost. Whether he can withstand the first few days is the question.”
“What do you need?”
Ana looked at him, perhaps hearing the absence of argument. “Shade over the small pen. Clean bedding. No access for birds after we apply the acaricide—not until the treated ticks have dropped and we’ve collected them. I don’t want wildlife eating contaminated parasites. I’ll start fluids and supportive care now, but if his packed cell volume is as low as I think, we may need donor blood.”
Linda had already taken out her phone. “I’ll call Rosa at the clinic and ask her to bring whatever you forgot because you were angry.”
“I didn’t forget anything.”
“Then she can bring dinner.”
For the next two hours, practical work displaced the family’s older grievances. Emilio stretched shade cloth over the catch pen while Linda spread clean coastal hay and set up a second boot pan. Ana physically removed the worst clusters from around the bull’s eyes and ears, dropping them into a lidded container. When Rosa Salcedo arrived from the clinic, she brought equipment, sandwiches, and the diplomacy to discuss neither the auction price nor Ana’s expression.
By sunset, the bull had received the first stage of treatment under a roof the birds could not enter. He stood in deep shade with water within reach. The caracaras had moved to the crossarm of the old windmill, black shapes against a sky turning copper over the brush.
The blood analyzer in Ana’s truck confirmed what his gums had shown. His red-cell level was low enough to make any exertion dangerous.
“I want someone watching him overnight,” she said. “If he goes flat on his side, if his breathing changes, if he cannot rise, call me. Do not decide to give him until morning.”
Emilio heard the calf between her sentences. “I called you that night.”
“You called after you had already decided to wait.”
“The heifer lived.”
Ana snapped the latch on her case. “Yes. She lived. You say that like it settles the account.”
Linda stood near the gate, looking down at the dust. Rosa found a reason to carry supplies to the truck.
Emilio rubbed his thumb across a splinter in the fence rail. “Your grandfather pulled calves for sixty years” was what he had said four years ago. Not because Ana lacked the skill. Because if she was right, then the knowledge that had made Emilio useful all his life had limits he had failed to see.
“I’ll call,” he said.
Ana studied his face. “Before you’re certain.”
“Before I’m certain.”
She left the clinic’s portable monitor and drove away after dark. Linda went to the house for blankets and coffee, but Emilio remained in a folding chair outside the double fence. The bull ate six mouthfuls of hay, drank, and stood with his nose near the ground. Every half hour, Emilio wrote down respirations and position on the chart Ana had taped to the fence.
At 1:40 a.m., the bull lay down on his chest. That was expected. At 2:15, he tried to rise and failed.
Emilio was through the outer gate before he remembered his dedicated boots. He stopped, backed out, changed them, and returned with the flashlight. The bull’s breathing came shallow and quick. His head sagged until his nose touched the hay.
Emilio took out his phone. He did not count another breath or wait for a second failed attempt. Ana answered on the third ring, her voice thick with sleep.
“He’s down,” Emilio said. “I need you back…”
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