Beep Beep!

Michael and I have become fascinated with roadrunners, those cute and zany birds that are native to the Southwest. Their funny crested heads and long striding legs give them an antic appearance that really appeals to us both.

Our personal experience with roadrunners involves the tame roadrunner, "Jerry," that lives at the Starr Pass Country Club where Michael sometimes has golf lessons. I sit up on the restaurant patio area and knit or read or check emails while Michael golfs there. Jerry hops up on the ledge and waits for diners to share their meals with him. He's not even a little shy, sometimes moseying over and hopping up on the table for a bite! And he is so cute as he cocks his head to look at you!

When I read in the paper that the Audubon Society was sponsoring a lecture about roadrunners, there was no hesitation on either of our parts about attending. The capacity crowd that showed up for the event told us that we weren't alone in our fascination.

The lecture, presented by Jim Cornett, a very appealing and knowledgeable speaker, was entitled, "The Roadrunner: Almost Human." Focusing on similarities between humans and roadrunners, the lecture was so interesting and informative...and funny!

So, here are the highlights.

• Roadrunners are among very few animals that mate for life. In order to win the affection of the female, the male must bring her a courtship present, and it needs to be a good one! Lizards are particularly valued. Yum. The male holds it in his beak until the mating is complete, and then the female snatches it from him.





• Roadrunners do not fly much. If they have to, they can glide, but they have no central breastbone, weak pectoral muscles and small wings, so flapping is not among their skills. They can, however, run 18 mph and stop or turn on a dime to stymie their predators.





• Roadrunners have zygodactylous feet (I took notes at the lecture!) That means they have 2 toes facing forward and 2 toes facing backward. When you look at their footprints in the sand they look like X's and you can't tell if they are moving toward you or away from you. Good for survival, huh?





• Males and females look almost identical in every way. They both have postorbital patches, which are patches of colored skin just behind their eyes. The patches are red, white, and blue, regardless of gender, and are revealed mostly during occasions of great anxiety.





• Roadrunners do not go "beep beep", but they do have a huge array of vocalizations.





• Roadrunners are omnivorous. They eat lots of things, but prefer meat. People sometimes tempt them with balls of hamburger, which they will happily accept, but it's best not to feed them this meat. If they have young in the nest and bring this food to them, the young will not develop properly and will die. That's because lizards and rodents, their "best" meals, provide the bone-building nutrients needed to help their long legs grow strong to be able to carry them. Roadrunners also eat snakes up to 18 inches long. They'll swallow the snake headfirst, but can only accommodate 1/2 the snake in their stomach at a time. As they digest the front half of the snake, the rest hangs out of their mouth for up to a few hours. Lovely.





• Roadrunners are very tame. (See "Jerry" above!) We learned that some people have roadrunners that will come tapping on their windows and doorwalls. When let inside, they will head to the kitchen to accept their snack. Those who are devoted to the wellbeing of the regular roadrunner visitors will purchase rats and mice for them and leave them on the drainboard. OMG!! Note: we have not yet done that.





• Roadrunners hatch their young asynchronously. This means that they are born over a series of days, rather than all at once. The firstborn is fed first and favored by the parents. In fact, it is not uncommon for the parents to take the lastborn chick and feed it to the firstborn to make him stronger. (Makes me happier to be a middle child! Um, watch out, Leonard!)

We bought a cute roadrunner yard art sculpture to bring home. He'll remind us of our cute desert friends. Beep Beep!

Desert Life

When you live in the desert you have to accept that you are co-existing with the wildlife that has always lived here. I had literally no experience with desert life before we first came to Tucson last year. In fact, on the drive out in 2010, I had asked Michael, "When they talk about the desert do they mean like Laurence of Arabia?" I was being serious. I couldn't even picture what life in Arizona would be like. Not even a little.





Now that it's our second year here, I am growing more accustomed to the little nuances of desert life that are so different from my life in the midwest. For instance, when we walk, I am careful not to brush up against the cactus. I know to use pliers to pry the errant quills of the "jumping cholla" off of my clothes and out of my skin. You really don't even have to touch those guys. They do jump off the bush and attach themselves to you! I know that we are likely to see coyotes and javelinas out and about (although we saw more last year than this year for some reason.) Our landlord cautioned us to close the front gate to avoid finding a javelina enjoying a drink at the waterfall fountain in our front yard. (Michael, of course, takes this as a personal challenge and keeps telling me that he WANTS to leave the gate open and meet the javelinas.) Our landlord also forwarded us a photo from last summer in which a wild bobcat sat perched on the outdoor spa near the pool in the backyard. We love watching the quail families cross the road and the roadrunners scoot around madly. The desert is alive with any number of wonderful species, and we welcome the opportunity to meet and greet them.




I was, however, totally unprepared for my first encounter with a diamondback rattlesnake on the path near our house! EEEEK! It has been unseasonably warm this March, with strings of days in the 80's. That's enough to heat the water in the pool to swimming temperatures (yay!), and apparently enough to encourage the snakes to venture out from wherever they have been all winter (boo!) No me gustan snakes!



Our friends Nancy and Jimmy were visiting from California. Nancy and I set out on a walk in the 'wash' down at the end of our street. This is my main neighborhood walk, a nice 45-minute circuit that takes me down the street, down a steep hill, over and back across the desert land that belongs to the county ('the wash,' named because that's where overflow water would run if it ever rained here!) , back up the hill and home again. I take this walk most days each week, often alone. As Nancy and I trekked across the desert portion of the walk, talking animatedly about her son's upcoming wedding, we spotted a 3-foot-long snake slithering across the path in front of us. It had diamond markings that caused it to blend in with the sand on the path, and several black stripes near its tail. (The fact that it was a rattlesnake was confirmed when we arrived at the visitor center of the park that afternoon and saw photos of the exact snake there.)


We were no more than 6 feet away from it, and I truly don't know what made us look down, as we were fully embroiled in our conversation. We grabbed each other and started taking long slow backward strides. Picture Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz in a panic. I had no clue whether it would chase us, coil up and strike, or what. I don't "do" snakes. I don't even read about them. I couldn't take my eyes off of this one, though.


Nancy remained perfectly calm and reassuring, for which I will always hold her in grateful admiration and amazement.
Me: "Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. What should we do? Should we go home? Should we run? Shit. Oh my God."
Nancy: " I'll do whatever you want to do. Let's think it through, Rhody. If you want to turn around, we can. I don't want to do anything that would make you uncomfortable. What would you like to do? Do you want me to walk ahead of you and keep a lookout?"
Really, Nancy? When did you get to be the brave one, and how did I turn out to be such a wuss?! Sheesh!
We waited, hearts pounding , (at least mine was) and watched him move slowly across the path and out of sight. After lots of discussion, we decided it would be safe to continue the walk, and we did. Safely.

Since that day I have talked to many locals and heard all kinds of stories about snakes. Some creeped me out, bigtime. A neighbor's child, new to Arizona, decided to "pet the nice snake in the driveway" and was rushed to the hospital. Another neighbor's dog nosed into a bush and was bitten by a rattler, requiring $1500 of treatment. (There are specific training sessions for dogs to teach them to avoid snakes, I learned. Now, that's a great idea.) Local parents train their kids to stay away from snakes from an early age. Golfers are cautioned not to reach into a bush to retrieve a ball.

Mostly, though, we found out that snakes aren't interested in harming humans without provocation. It's important to pay attention to your surroundings when out and about in warmer weather. Look down and around when walking. Make noise on the path to scare snakes away. Give them a wide berth if you need to pass them.

I'm thinking that maybe Chicago will be a wide enough berth from the snakes for me!

If you're wondering why there's no photo for this post, I was too busy wiping the shit that ran down my leg to grab my camera and snap it! JK

Generations

Nothing lights me up in the way that spending time with my kids does. Michael and I are so grateful that we are fortunate enough to have the kids living nearby. So it's with some level of guilt that we take off for the winter. It was particularly hard to leave Chicago this winter because we'd be gone during the second trimester of Carrie's pregnancy. Sure, we had Skype, email, and phone calls to help us stay in touch, but nothing comes close to that hands-on contact that I was craving. We were so excited that David and Jolene and Carrie and Chris would be able to come and spend a long weekend with us in February.

By the time we got to the airport to pick them up, I was practically jumping out of my skin. And then, there they were, walking through the airport door into the bright Tucson sunshine. Carrie's blossoming belly preceded her, and the look on her face was so much "the cat that swallowed the canary." She was clearly so excited to show us how far she had progressed. It was the proud face of my little girl who had just completed a complicated project at arts camp or earned a spot on the traveling soccer team. Now she was a mom-to-be, incubating our grandson! Surreal, to be sure.

In typical Carrie fashion, before the sun set on their first day here, she generously whipped up her shirt and pulled down the panel on her pants to reveal "the bump," offering herself to us for full examination. Then she grabbed my hand and carefully guided it over her taut belly. "Here," she whispered. "Hold it here." Seconds later I felt the fluttery kick against my hand and then a light thump. A tiny drummer beating his own rhythm. Magic. Hi, baby. It's Grandma. I love you.

Our time together, just the six-and-a-half of us, was grand. We did some hiking, lots of laughing, and lots of eating! There was a lavish breakfast featuring french toast casserole and fresh fruit, a picnic on the road to Mt Lemmon where we assembled makeshift sandwiches and stuffed potato chips into our mouths, a BBQ brisket dinner in the comfort of home, a visit to In-N-Out Burger, a fancy dinner at Wildflower and more. We sat outside and read, we gathered in the kitchen to make loads of salsa and guacamole and then dove into them with fistfuls of chips. Through it all there was such good energy between us all. What a bonus it is that the kids all genuinely like each other. Everyone helped out with the cooking, the dishes, the food prep and the clean-up. I am so proud of this crew!

The weekend flew by, and though we are reluctant to leave the mountains and sunshine, we are drawn, as though by magnets, to return to the kids in Chicago.