Something I thought I would I would share here , I have to entice Stelco down here somehow and knowing he is a bit of a bird lover , I thought I would talk of one of the more amusing residents here .
You all remember the Roadrunner and Wily coyote cartoons surely beep , beep. First a little factual background ;
http://www.desertusa.com/mag98/sep/papr/road.html
These birds are VERY curious and VERY territorial . Living out in the boonies as we do , we have to amuse ourselves somehow and a trick I picked up from my grandmother years ago was to put a mirror out in an area that the roadruuners will frequent . So Mr. roadrunner will come trotting along ,struttin' his stuff . ( Although well capable of flying they spend most of thier time as ground birds ) Well when the roadrunner encounters thier image in a mirror , they take it as a intruder on thier territory and they will do battle with thier image . Run at it flinging themselves at it ,beating thier wings at it , show it no mercy . Usually at some point in the battle it will either go around or over the mirror and all of a sudden it no longer sees the intruder . Well at this point it will fluff itself up and preen a bit thinking it has done a great job at successfully driven the intruder off . Then often it will resume its original course bringing it past the front of the mirror once more . I think you can guess what happens for _ _ _ _ the rest of the story .
We have learned it to be not prudent to leave the windows of our vehicles down as these birds curiousity seems to demand that they check out, inspect everything within thier territory including the interior of vehicles . Imagine roadrunner at, on the steering wheel , good thing they have not learned to start the cars YET !
A story about roadrunners
I had an Eastern Kingbird that picked a single sliding glass door (out of several) this past spring to fight with his reflection in. I'd hear thud, thud, thud, thud . . . and there he was. Up to the top and then down to the bottom. Over and over. Day after day. I got used to it. Dumb birds!
No one else with amusing bird stories ?
Lets not limit this to birds , any of god's creatures will do .
This message was edited Oct 21, 2008 2:59 PM
That is too hilarious. I can't imagine coming out and finding a roadrunner in my car. I had a cat when I was a kid that would climb into any open vehicles parked at any of the neighbors' houses. He just walked around the vehicle, somtimes standing up in the driver's seat with his paws on the steering wheel. I guess if he were one for sleeping in vehicles, we'd have lost him. The memory is funny, but I'm much too protective to let that happen now.