the.com/roadrunner
the bird that walks instead of flies, eats rattlesnakes for breakfast, and outruns your excuses
means A long-tailed, ground-dwelling bird of the cuckoo family native to the deserts of the American Southwest and Mexico, known for sprinting across open ground instead of taking to the air.
from A plain English compound — 'road' plus 'runner' — coined by observers who kept seeing the bird dash along desert trails and wagon roads ahead of horses and travelers. It's a fairly literal name, the kind settlers hand out when a creature does one memorable thing. The same habit gave it other folk names like 'chaparral cock' and the Spanish 'paisano,' meaning 'fellow countryman,' as if it were a companion of the road.
- top speed
- sprints up to 20 miles per hour
- snake slayer
- kills and swallows rattlesnakes whole
- sun bather
- exposes black back skin to soak up morning heat
- cartoon lie
- real ones say a soft coo, never beep beep
- state pride
- official state bird of New Mexico
greater roadrunner bird — geococcyx californianus, a real ground-dwelling cuckoo found in southwestern us and mexico deserts