THE VOICE OF THE DESERT 



38 



Yet all the road runner's peculiarities represent things 

 learned, and learned rather recently as a biologist under- 

 stands "recent." He is not a creature who happened to have 

 certain characteristics and habits and vv^ho therefore sur- 

 vived here. This is a region he moved into and he wsiS once 

 very different. As a matter of fact, so the ornithologists tell 

 us, he is actually a cuckoo, although no one w^ould ever 

 guess it v^ithout studying his anatomy. Outv^ardly, there 

 is nothing to suggest the European cuckoo of reprehen- 

 sible domestic morals or, for that matter, the American 

 cuckoo or "rain crow" whose mournful note is familiar 

 over almost the entire United States and part of Canada — 

 not excluding the wooded oases of Arizona itself. That 

 cuckoo flies, perches, sings and eats conventional bird food. 

 He lives only where conditions are suited to his habits. But 

 one of his not too distant relatives must have moved into 

 the desert — slowly, no doubt — and made himself so much 

 at home there that by now he is a cuckoo only to those 

 who can read the esoteric evidences of his anatomical 

 structure. 



Despite all this, it must be confessed that not every- 

 body loves the road runner. Nothing is so likely to make 

 an animal unpopular as a tendency to eat things which 

 we ourselves would like to eat. And the road runner is 

 guilty of just this wickedness. He is accused, no doubt 

 justly, of varying his diet with an occasional egg of the 

 Gambel's quail, or even with an occasional baby quail it- 

 self. Sportsmen are afraid that this reduces somewhat the 

 number they will be able to kill in their own more efficient 

 way and so, naturally, they feel that the road runner 

 should be eliminated. 



To others it seems that a creature who so triumphantly 



