What is to harvest but to reap, to benefit.
We stand at the end of a dock that juts into a pond. Wood peels off the planks in strips, soft to the touch and gray from nearly 50 years of Texas sun. The smell of nutria scat stings the air, a lingering musk that betrays nighttime rodent-romps.
I am six, clutching my first fishing pole. Orange rings loop up and down the gray and black rod. My thumb barely fits over the big black button of the spincast reel. Dad shows me how to cast back, how to release at the right moment and watch the line float out in front like the thread of a spider web, depositing the bobber on top of the water. I cast out with a whir, ease into the release, reel in the line with a click. Whirr. Click. Repeat. A two-handed job, to hold the rod in my left and reel with my right.
Nowhere to be but the present.
The bobber sinks, sending a current of anticipation through my body. The rod curves, as the bass pulls on the line, instinct driving him downward. “Easy now,” Dad coaches. “Keep that tip up.”
I plant myself on my end of the line, the fish hooked on the other. Connected. I settle back into my heels, brace myself for the tug of war. We give and take like this, until the tension goes slack. I reel in the line and the bass comes into view, speckled green freckles, large mouth agape at the hook. Dad helps me take the hook out with a quick yank. Looks at me.
“Let’s keep this one,” I say. It’s my call.
I deposit the bass into the metal creel chained to one end of the dock, look into his watery eye, feel the slip of scales, the grit of pond scum.
Back in the ranch house, I can barely see over the kitchen sink, white and sturdy. But curiosity roots me to the tiled floor. Curiosity, and something else—a sense of seeing it through, this choice I made to keep this fish, kill this fish, eat this fish. Dad pulls a wood-handled knife from the kitchen drawer and slices a clean line along the white underbelly. Nothing happens, and then everything happens—the purest red seeps out and stains the belly of the bass. A sour smell fills the room. The scraping sound of scales departing flesh, the whirl of water washing the insides down the drain.
Spring 2021. I’m sitting on the porch swing outside the ranch house writing as Dory hunts lizards, dirt flying from her paws as she bounds between patches of what used to be, before her arrival, neatly mulched and planted flower beds. The live oaks are aflit with activity. A Carolina wren flashes between the yard and the nest she shelters in the firewood pile on the covered porch. A house finch peers down at me from the wooden beam above the swing, twig in her beak, mid-decision about whether to continue constructing her nest above my head. I sit as still and friendly-looking as I can, but to my disappointment, she opts not to.
From somewhere in the branches of the live oak I hear a gurgled song, the second syllable descending in pitch before immediately rising in a whistle. Like water dropping onto stone. Drawn to the unfamiliar sound, I stand up. I stare into the density of leaves but cannot see or hear anything. Returning to my perch, I hear it again. My heart flutters, imagining some never-seen-on-the-ranch species I can impress Dad with. Then the bird comes into view.
“Oh,” I say, my disappointment audible. “Hello, cowbird.”
A broad neck and short tail distinguish the brown-headed cowbird from other blackbirds. The male sports a brown hood that falls to his chest, the rest of him black as a graduation gown with iridescent feathers that shimmer in the sunlight. The female brown-headed cowbird… well, the female looks a bit like a Mrs. Potato Head—if Mrs. Potato Head had beady eyes, a sparrow’s mottled breast with a finch’s beak jammed in at the nose, and chicken’s feet stuck in at her base. Which is to say, disjointed.
Native to North America, brown-headed cowbirds originally inhabited the grasslands that run through the center of the continent. The birds traveled with herds of buffalo, feeding on—in addition to seeds and grains—the grasshoppers and insects that popcorn up in the wake of grazing animals. Rather than build their own nests, as an adaptation to this nomadic lifestyle, female cowbirds evolved to lay their eggs in the nests of other songbirds.
As bison herds diminished at the hands of white (un)settlers and the United States army, who killed the buffalo to destroy the food source of Native Americans, and as forests were cleared to favor rangeland for livestock, brown-headed cowbirds expanded their range on the backs of cattle. Today, cowbirds breed throughout the United States and Canada, and winter as far south as Mexico, inhabiting not just grasslands and prairies but woodland edges, brushy thickets, orchards, and residential lawns.
I don’t know whose idea it was—Tammy’s, or Dad’s—that we all work together on the ranch those summers in middle and high school: me, my cousins, and Tammy’s two boys. The kids of the owners of the ranch and the kids of ranch staff, side by side, hands in dirt, stone, and fire ants.
I remember the friction of it all, though, each of us believing this place home, each claiming title or ownership or knowing. They lived on this land, barefoot in the soil day in and out. We were transplants from town, coming out to the ranch from Austin on weekends and holidays. Who belonged?
But the supremacy was evident even then. Fourteen years later, when our parents parted ways, we would get to stay. They would be uprooted.
When land is home. When home is taken away.
People have walked the land we call Central Texas for thousands of years. Have stewarded these lands. Have called this place home. Long before Texas was Texas.
Tribal bands thrived across Central Texas, including the Tonkawa, Lipan Apache, Jumano, Alabama-Coushatta, Comanche, Kiowa, Seminoles, Caddo, Mimbreño Apache, Yaqui, Kickapoo, Wichita, and the many bands that formed the Coahuiltecan.. Until removal. Until displacement. Until “settlers.”
And here’s an un-Texan thing to say. Just because someone didn’t “settle” here doesn’t mean they weren’t here. Doesn’t mean they aren’t still here. The violence of my ancestors—to claim land that was already claimed.
Claim, from the Latin clamare, to call out.
What history do we claim?
Whose story do we give voice to?
A mile and a half down the road that winds through the heart of the ranch, the otherwise-ubiquitous oaks and shrubs stop short at a fenceline as if obeying a hidden No Trespassing sign. The 60-acre “Coastal Field” lies to the east of the road. Named for the Coastal Bermuda grass planted when the field was cleared for hay and cattle grazing in the early 1940s, the grasses hold their ground. In May of 2021, the sky splits and 11 inches of rain—seven inches above average—spill into the soil. The field erupts with growth. Zexmania flowers, nicknamed “sex mania” because of their explosiveness, yellow the pasture.
Rusted metal frames a contraption that stands squarely in the middle of the field. It looks like a cage you might see at a zoo, except that instead of bars, half-inch mesh screen encloses the top and sides. Solid wood covers the bottom of the cage, which sits directly on the earth. From March through May, the cage hosts flocks of cowbirds that flutter back and forth in the six-foot by eight-foot enclosure, chattering loudly. It might be a party, were it not that the guests have been duped into attending. Cowbirds are social creatures, so the Texas Parks and Wildlife manual advises baiting the cage with a few “decoy” birds. Other cowbirds get curious and fly in to join the revelry. Alas, it’s a trap. The top panel of the cage has a 1.25-inch slot that allows the cowbirds into the chamber but does not allow for exit.
Driving by heap after heap on the sidewalk of downtown Austin on the way to a birthday party in high school. Birthday of a peripheral friend whose father rented a penthouse at the top of a hotel for her Sweet 16. Realizing heap after heap was a human covered in a blanket.
This was the early 2000s, and our high school was filled with students whose parents had made it in the dot-com boom of the 90s, the tech boom that arguably put Austin on the map for development. At the party, we sat on the outskirts, my friends refusing to dance, my mind free to wander. My thoughts floated out the wall-to-wall windows and down to the huddled heaps.
The tug of connection.
Apparently, I’m okay cohabitating with wildness until the wildness gets too close.
On a Tuesday, I wander up the road on my morning walk with Dory. As I approach the field on my right, a white Toyota RAV4 rambles across the cattle guard and turns onto the two-track that leads into the middle of the field. It’s a volunteer, come to break up the party.
One by one, he swoops birds in a minnow dip net like the kind we brought to the creek as kids. He releases cardinals, rogue mockingbirds, and sparrows who, being of comparable size to the cowbird, find their way into the trap looking for food or company. Already-dead birds, whether maimed in the trap or killed by hawks that plunge from above, are removed. One by one, he extinguishes life from the female cowbirds. He places thumb and forefinger around her neck, then uses his right hand to lift and turn her head until the cervical vertebrae detach, severing head from beating heart. The manual suggests facing the bird away from you the first few times you attempt this “until you have the touch.”
This impulse codified in instruction manual—to look away from the harm we are causing until it comes naturally. I suspect this is how violence becomes unquestioned policy, when we sever our actions from the lives they impact, until the cage is empty of those who would object, their voices silenced. The “alternate dispatch” method is euthanization via carbon monoxide in a five-gallon bucket.
If it were all gone tomorrow, I’d want you to know: this violence, we got used to it.
This caging, we condoned it.
One fall morning, I walk through the cattle guard carrying Dory’s stuffed piñata donkey, brightly colored and ribbon-tailed. Dory grabs Piñata from my hands, gets distracted by a smell, drops Piñata. I pick up Piñata. Repeat. At the curve in the road, I realize Dory no longer heels my side and turn to find her lost in smell. My eyes slowly register the freshly upturned soil, like someone hoed the entire area to plant potatoes, grass ripped out and rooted about. There’s no room to even consider the possibility of armadillos. The vastness of the destruction, spanning the length of the fenceline, reeks of hogs. Looking across the road, the damage continues on the other side, though more haphazardly, like the hogs lost steam as they wandered off. Moving toward a muddy flat spot, I find unmistakably cloven tracks. Taking a step back, I let it all sink in.
Leaving Piñata to retrieve on the way back, we walk on in relative silence. My insides feel as turned over as the soil. I am surprised by the proximity of the hogs to the ranch house. The feeling that pervades my body: fear. Peace, revoked. Safety, revoked.
As we walk, we tune into our respective senses. I keep alert to sight and sounds, scanning for movement, listening for any grunts, or breaking of branches. Dory keeps her nose to the ground. She picks up a scent and begins to tear in circles, left side of the road, right side of the road, back again, in a full sprint, high on hog scent.
After a moment, I make the call. “C’mon, Dory. Let’s go back.”
I turn us around, take photos of the damage and text them to Dylan, who I expect to see driving down the road any minute to spread mulch at the ranch house. The return text comes in—“Oh man!”—but by the time he gets to the house, Dory and I have wandered off toward Middle Pasture.
I intend to walk through the pasture, three creek crossings downstream of the swimming hole, in search of water. Instead, after the second crossing, more hog tracks, more dog racing, only this time, piles of cleared cedar litter the pasture and I don’t have line of sight to hog or hound. I turn us back toward the ranch house for the second time.
An errand takes me off the ranch later that morning—a visit to urgent care for a histamine flare-up. Driving back in toward the ranch house upon my return, the outline of something—or someone—appears through the trees. Rounding the curve, the man-shape materializes into Dylan, rifle in hand, searching.
Oh man.
This blood is on my hands.
A sinking feeling sweeps my body. So does a feeling of safety. Both things are true, along with the thought that maybe this teaches the hogs to stay clear of the ranch house. Apparently, I’m okay cohabitating with wildness until the wildness gets too close.
And I want to say, “But I didn’t ask him to…” I didn’t have to ask him. What was I trying to accomplish otherwise, with that text?
The thought creeps in too late. What if I was never unsafe? The hogs were long gone.
My fear is a trap. When my desire for safety bumps up against the feral, the wildness, sometimes just the existence of others.
My fear is a trap. It takes me out of connection with the earth.
My fear is a trap. It is wrecking my nervous system.
What I used to know, standing on that dock, before the world told me what to know: when my decision comes at the cost of another life, I do not get to look away.
Ball moss backlit against a lightening sky.
I will never see ball moss without remembering how my sister Kathleen and I used to walk into one specific pasture, to one specific tree, to pull the ball moss off the live oak. A behemoth, low-growing tree, so we could easily reach her lower branches and climb the sloping trunk to reach more. We spent hour upon hour pulling ball moss off that tree. We thought the moss a parasite. So here we were, doing our small part with our small hands to relieve at least this one tree. “There,” we said as we turned back toward the ranch house. “Much better.”
Except we never made substantial progress. Each time we returned, so had the moss.
Ball moss isn’t actually moss. Ball moss is a flowering plant, in the pineapple family. More prone to be found on rough-textured bark trees like live oaks and cedar elms. The easier to cling to.
Except it turns out, ball moss doesn’t actually hurt the live oak. Considered an epiphyte because of their benign interaction on their host, ball moss photosynthesizes their own food. They are not a needy guest. The clump of moss, with all their crevices and crannies, serves as habitat for insects and small animals. Becomes bird-buffet.
Our desire, innocent as it was, to fix something that wasn’t broken. To remove something because it was unsightly. Because we made assumptions. Turns out, that moss was habitat. Turns out, that tree was home.
Driving into the city from the ranch, I always seem to hit the stoplight at the intersection of Southwest Parkway and Mopac. An unhoused man walks up and down the median of the road with a sign, a steady trickle of sweat down his face. Many days I look down, pretend to be distracted by my phone, afraid to see anguish inside the eyes of a neighbor.
In 2021, Elon Musk announces the relocation of Tesla headquarters to Austin, single-handedly adding 10,000 new residents to the population. Other corporations flock in to join the revelry, declaring Austin prime habitat. Beneath an ad for “How to Doomsday Prep in Austin,” an article lists corporations expanding their range: Apple builds a one-billion-dollar campus in North Austin, Meta is in the market for one million square feet of new office space in Austin, Oracle moves its headquarters to Austin, Amazon builds a nearly four million square foot fulfillment center in north Travis County. The article extols “job growth,” “booming engine,” “influx.”
Meanwhile, Central Texas tops another chart as the ninth least affordable metropolitan region in the country, a crisis that disproportionately impacts certain members of our human community. In East Austin, longtime residents of Montopolis, a historically Black, Latino, and Native neighborhood, witness their community developed as coffee shops, yoga studios, and bars encroach. A historic Black church is demolished and replaced by an apartment building, another erased and paved over to make way for new traffic. Property taxes rise as outsiders move in to capitalize on the neighborhood, displacing poorer residents to the outskirts.
In 2005, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department launched a cowbird trapping program to improve nesting songbird populations across 50 counties in Texas. Since then, over 140,000 cowbirds have been “successfully harvested,” a palatable term, as if in harvesting cowbirds we are feeding ourselves. Perhaps we are.
What is to harvest but to reap, to benefit. To empty the cage of cowbirds—to kill cowbirds—seems more palatable than to own the impact of sprawl, gentrification, and colonization. But I am reminded of one of my favorite passages from Braiding Sweetgrass, in the chapter titled “The Council of Pecans.” Robin Wall Kimmerer writes, “[W]e make a grave error if we try to separate individual well-being from the health of the whole. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together. All flourishing is mutual.” I wonder how we might act differently if we believed that what happens to our neighbors on the East Side of Austin happens to us all. If we understood the fate of the cowbirds, or the golden-cheeked warblers, to be our own. We tinker with once piece, forgetting it’s intricately woven into an ecosystem far greater than we understand. We pluck one string, and the whole web reverberates.
A second cowbird trap sits near the entrance to the ranch, by the old red barn. Five years have passed since the last cows were hauled off the ranch, but cowbirds can live to be 16 and I wonder if, like mine, their memory binds them to this place. I used to avoid looking at the trap when I drove by, for fear of seeing birds inside. But it feels worse to turn away—I’m complicit either way. These days, if there are birds in the trap during breeding season, I hold my gaze and say hello.
Liz Domenech writes at the intersection of people and place. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including Orion, The Sunlight Press, and Montana Naturalist, and her essays have been finalists and semifinalists for the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction and the Terry Tempest Williams Creative Nonfiction Prize. Originally from the Texas Hill Country, Liz lives in Bozeman, Montana.
Some names in this essay have been changed to protect privacy.
Header photo of cowbird by Jason, courtesy Pixabay. Photo of Liz Domenech by Townsend Collective.
