THE VOICE OF THE DESERT 



36 



victims. And yet we still feel superior to the men of the 

 Middle Ages who insisted that the toad had a precious 

 jewel in his head, when they might so easily have found 

 out that he didn't! 



Of course it may just possibly turn out that the road 

 runner really does fence his victims in. Stranger things do 

 happen and the evidence against it is necessarily only 

 negative. But the "paisano" is odd enough without the 

 legends. Almost everything about him is unbird-like at 

 the same time that it fits him to desert conditions. He is a 

 bird who has learned how not to act like one. ^ 



Though he can fly — at least well enough to get to the 

 top of a mesquite if there is some really urgent reason for 

 doing so — he would rather not, trusting to his long legs 

 to catch his prey and to get him out of trouble. The sound 

 which he makes is like nothing on earth, least of all like 

 a bird. One writer describes it as a sort of modified Bronx 

 cheer, which is right enough since it seems to be made by 

 the raucous expeUing of air accompanied by a rapid gnash- 

 ing of the bill — if a bill can be gnashed. Like the bird 

 himself, the sound is derisive, irascible, ribald, threaten- 

 ing, and highly self-confident. As befits a no-nonsense sort 

 of creature, the road runner is content to dress himself in 

 neutral, brown-speckled feathers, but there is a line of red 

 cuticle behind his eye which he can expose when it seems 

 desirable to look a bit fiercer than usual. 



Sociologists talk a great deal these days about "adjust- 

 ment," which has always seemed to me a defeatist sort of 

 word suggesting dismal surrender to the just tolerable. The 

 road runner is not "adjusted" to his environment. He is 

 triumphant in it. The desert is his home and he likes it. 

 Other creatures, including many other birds, elude and 



