Here, in the warm cavern of the family home, the herd gathers, drawn back across great distances by an ancient migratory pull none of them can quite name. Watch now as the dominant female, matriarch of this territory for some forty winters, moves through the steam-thick air of the kitchen, defending her domain against all offers of help with a firm and practised swat. This is her hunt. She has been foraging since before dawn.
Observe the elaborate courtship of the table itself: the specimens lay out the good crockery, the ceremonial crackers, the small candles that will be lit and photographed and then forgotten. And there, at the head, the largest offering of the year, a bird so vast it required its own vehicle, carried aloft to reverent silence.
Now, the tension. The younger males, sensing weakness, circle the last roast potato. One reaches. Another reaches. For a single breathless moment the whole herd freezes, forks suspended, as two generations lock eyes across the gravy. The elder yields, as elders sometimes must. The season is turning.
And here, the true wonder of the ritual. Bellies swollen, the herd does not disperse. They cannot. Some deep instinct pins them to their seats, half-asleep, complaining softly of fullness while reaching, even now, for one more chocolate. They will say the same thing every year: never again. And every year, when the cold returns and the light grows short, they will feel the pull once more, and they will come home, and they will eat until they cannot move.
It is not hunger that brings them back.
It never was.