If the comment sections of Rio Grande Valley newspapers are any indication, Hidalgo County is regarded as something of a rustic backwater by its more urbane neighbors. Stories like this one sure can give a stereotype like that some legs.

Yesterday afternoon, 41-year-old Cirilo Castillo Jr. was arraigned on two counts of trespassing and two counts of animal cruelty after a local rancher captured him on video having sex with one of her mares.

The woman had gone to authorities on December 30. The surveillance tape she brought cops allegedly shows Castillo entering her barn without permission, tying the mare to a fence and then lashing its legs together, presumably to prevent him getting a swift kick in the nuts. (We can but hope that was a lesson he had to learn by painful experience.) And then Castillo is reportedly seen dropping his pants and having sex with the mare.

Cops recognized Castillo, who has a long record of weed and harder drug offenses. They picked him up on Tuesday, and he confessed to that stump-breaking episode, as well as at least one more, at a ranch a mile or so down the road.

According to the McAllen Monitor, another rancher had told police back in November that he had caught a man named Castillo having his wicked way with his mares on no fewer than four occasions. That man later picked Cirilo Castillo out of a lineup.

A commenter at Valleycentral.com recalled a similar area case from a few years back:

I remember when I was working at Chanell 4 a few years back, there was a man who was arrested for the same crime in Hidalgo Co. The owners of the horse would notice some cinder blocks would stack up during the night and remnants of carrots and apples were found by the horse. So they set up a security camera in the stall and voila! Perv was caught!

No word on whether Castillo was as willing to wine and dine the mares on the receiving end of his vile horsing around, nor if he left any tell-tale stepping-stones behind.