December 20 2023

Beep Beep

Dear Friends,

I’m back, but don’t know how steady I’ll be in producing e-mails to send to you.  Bit of health problems going on, and I end up trying to sleep it off for much of the day over the last two or three weeks.  My doctor has approved getting me an insulin pump, and that should help me out a great deal, although it may be March before it happens.

Here’s a what-am-I quiz for you:  

1. Animal, vegetable, mineral? Animal

2. Is it a vertebrate? Yes 

3. What is the general classification? Aves

4. Is it bigger than a bread box? No

5. What noise does it make beep beep

6. Is it a roadrunner? Well done . . You got it in six questions.

My brother-in-law from South Carolina visited us late summer, early autumn last year.  I cautioned him against running over the roadrunner who was frequently showing up about a quarter mile from the retreat.  I was seeing it about half the time when I had to go into town for something.

Within a couple weeks after Ernie’s visit, I stopped seeing it.  Now this year, it was showing up again, although not nearly as frequently as last year.

Roadrunners can run about 25 mph.  Coyotes can run up to 43 mph, so, unlike the cartoon versions, coyotes can outrun roadrunners.  However, coyotes can’t fly.  Roadrunners can.  Roadrunners can kill rattlesnakes and is one of the few predators that will!

Roadrunner’s range is Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, as well as into parts of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri.  We rarely see them around here . . near Commerce, Texas, but do catch a few glimpses most years.

I’ve never seen the roadrunner running down the road.  Always across it.  I enjoy seeing it.  The way they run, they lower their head and tail so that their head, back, and tail are all straight from each other.  For each season, they are monogamous, sticking with one mate each year, but then may have a different mate the next year.

Had a fellow at the university for about three years who was a roadrunner scientist.  He would sometimes send grad students west in Texas to have them count and log in the roadrunner calls in an attempt to estimate the roadrunner populations of those areas.

That’s about all the info on roadrunners for now, although down our road, I did notice a small clutch of purple feathers caught in a barb wire fence.

Call to action: The more you come visit us at Fox Country Quilts, the better your chance of spotting our neighborhood roadrunner, which is quite a treat.

Chip