Fionn, who was now a coyote, was suddenly very hungry. It was a kind of relentless hungry that he had never felt before. He sniffed the air. He trotted some on four legs which seemed much more efficient than his two human legs had been. He looked around. Then, he saw a huge buffalo looking right back at him. There was something familiar about the buffalo. “Susan?” asked Fionn.

“Yep,” answered the buffalo.

Then Fionn saw Jake, or rather the prairie dog version of Jake, standing on top of a mound of dirt. Fionn’s mouth really started watering. Fionn got a happy thought. This time around, he was not Jake’s prey; it was the other way around. Fionn was the predator. Okay. Maybe he wouldn’t eat Jake; that would be just too weird. But, seriously, the idea of eating a twitching rodent suddenly seemed to be quite appetizing to Fionn’s new coyote self.

Keeping his ears perked was easy and produced amazing results. Fionn could hear everything. He had never noticed before just how full of sound the world was. Fionn could hear the buffalo pulling at the grass. He could hear other coyotes loping through the distant grass. He could even hear the grasshoppers rustling Grass Ann Marie’s blades.