With a trend towards intensification among farmed cattle, rabies is the only zoonosis in Brazil’s pampa gaucho that really threatens small farmers, who are often unaware of the disease due to various factors. The scenes associated in this way are intended to show the environment in which bovine rabies develops in the pampas of Rio Grande do Sul and the type of social group affected. In the region where the ethnographic work was carried out, cases of rabies were particularly prevalent among small farmers, causing economic and emotional damage. It has been argued that the increase in rabies cases in Brazil and especially in the Pampa region is due to the deforestation of the humid regions of northern South America, caused to create pasture for the large herds of cattle that feed the global meat industry.