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Wild hearts

This place is pretty quiet most of the year. Summer is so hot that the leaves just hang limply on the trees and dogs don’t do anything but pant in the shade. In winter, everything is covered with snow, and no one dares go out because it would be so easy for the Hunters to follow the tracks. Ah, but in spring and fall, that’s when the migrations take place. The whole area is alive with sound, smells, and color, then! First, the livers, coursing through the undergrowth, and baying like a million snakes are on their heels. Which in a way they are, for the small intestines follow just a few days behind, with the large intestines not many days later. And then the lungs, sailing high in the sky, gliding from updraft to updraft, sometimes so far up they cannot even be seen. The pituitaries generally piggy-back on the larger organs, particularly the spleens, gall bladders, and kidneys, because they are the favored prey of the sharp-eyed lymph nodes, which glide along at tree-top level. But you can tell the equinox even without a calendar, because that’s when the last of the major organs reach our latitude. Yes, I can hear the beat of a myriad tiny wings outside my window and I know it’s time. Wild hearts are coming home.