Roadrunners: The Desert’s Turbocharged Bird
Posted: Thursday, October 06, 2011
by Krista Aman-Widgren
Gospelflier
“Roadrunner! The Coyote is after you! Roadrunner! If he catches you, you’re through!” When I was a kid, I used to watch Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons every Sunday morning and I loved that ornery fast bird so much. As a teenager, I played CB tag and “Roadrunner” was my handle.
After I got married we moved to a Dewey, Arizona, which is in Central Arizona. It is almost exactly halfway between Phoenix and Flagstaff. I looked forward to seeing a real Roadrunner. I remember joking with my husband, Chris that real Roadrunners are not blue and don’t have Wil E.Coyote chasing after them.
Over the summer Wayne would show up looking for tasty morsels such as lizards, snakes, scorpions or even small birds to eat. There were plenty of lizards around. We had what my husband called “Push Up” lizards because they always looked like they were doing push-ups, the larger Fence Lizards and the Horny Toads which were actually lizards as well. Once the Roadrunner’s lunchbox was full, he would drag race down our road, head parallel to the ground. If he came to a fence, he would spread out his wings and glide over it like a chicken on steroids.
One day Chris came home from work and said, “Krista you have to come see this.” He took me to a storage shed and said “Now you have to be really quiet.” There was a janitorial cart that was not being used in the back of the shed and he pointed to it. On top of the cart was a nest and sitting on the nest was a Roadrunner and four chicks with beaks like black scissors. She looked at me, blinked her eyes, and clicked her beak in warning. “Hi Mama.” Chris softly said. The baby birds were just starting to get their feathers. It was the neatest experience seeing a Roadrunner up close with her young ones. We left quietly.
We went shopping for groceries and saw two Roadrunners patrolling the parking lot for food. They reminded me of a pair of predatory dogs pacing each other two feet apart, heads partially down, topknots back, eyes roving looking for tasty morsels. Most parking lots have Seagulls; in Arizona it was Roadrunners.
Early one morning Wayne came for a visit and decided to sit on the roof of our house hunting for lizards and a mate. He was cooing earnestly like an overgrown dove, and then he jumped off the roof onto our backyard fence and scooped up a lizard and stood there proud of himself for his catch. His topnotch stood straight up and his feathers were ruffled as he paced down the hill and into the bushes.
Sadly we had to move away from Arizona and that was the last time I saw a Roadrunner. I was glad I got a chance to observe these whimsical birds up close.
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