They are like African wild dogs attacking a hyena. The painted coyotes as they call them, one has a mane, others crawl like a black jackrabbit through a briar patch, there are poisonous cane toads and a few mean old mules, stubborn and ornery, the skeleton of an old truck rusting by the highway, cave bats and only one interesting colorful dart frog. No lions, the snowshoe hare pulled their tales and they all left to prettier water holes and mountains to scale. I'll stay in the kudzu, here among the splintered benches and locked traps where shadows dance around and spring to life like an organ player in a church. It always makes the old hens and hags jump.
It's fun to be swarmed by bees, an entire crowd of howling and ugly wolves, the swan among the ducks, heart in Heaven, heart full of hurt, a heart that barely works since birth.