I saw a roadrunner the other day at work, and during our group IM silliness this morning at work, I commented that I would put a bow on it, name it Frankie and give it to my friend Jodie for her birthday. The discussion went a little wonky and I wondered to the group what the damned things ate.
Someone suggested other birds and I of course chastised the person for being silly. Birds like that didn't eat other birds! Hawks and vultures and THOSE kinds of birds ate other birds. Surely not roadrunners. I suggested bugs and lizards and things like that.
Because the group (even the native Phoenicians) could come to no clear consensus, I internetted the shit out of that question and found, to my shock and horror that the person that had suggested that roadrunners eat birds was in fact correct. Shaken, I read on. Apparently, I too was correct thinking that they ate bugs and lizards. But they eat so many more things. For example, from the Wikipedia page, they also eat:
"insects, fruit and seeds with the addition of
small reptiles,
including snakes,
small mammals, spiders, scorpions, centipedes, millipedes,
small birds, their eggs, and carrion, including road kills." Gross, of course, but this is the desert and I can't begrudge a little birdy (ok, a foot-tall birdy with a 2 ft wingspan) what it needs to survive. But get this. It's kind of a badass too. Again from the wiki:
"It kills larger prey
with a blow from the beak—hitting the base of the neck of small mammals—or by
holding it in the beak and beating it against a rock. Two roadrunners sometimes
attack a relatively big snake cooperatively. Cases have been recorded where roadrunners have run as fast as 26 miles per hour"
What the hell, man!? It can run 26 MPH (definitely outrunning my white lazy ass) and holds its prey by the neck and beating it against a rock until it dies!? I give, man. You win, roadrunner!
