PlatKat.com

After enjoying a 3pm Saturday brunch, my friends and I encountered a roadrunner in the Z-Tejas parking lot.

As with all land-roaming birds, my first instinct was to chase it. I don’t know why I still feel this way, as my home of Illinois is also home to some of the meanest geese you ever seen. Also, when I was a stupid kid (rather than a stupid adult), I managed to catch a baby duck as its mother and siblings fled. It was pretty cool for about three seconds. Then I asked myself the all important question, What the hell am I going to do with this? and let it go. Mama duck hung out and yelled at me the whole time I had it, but I’m pretty sure she wasn’t too excited about taking care of it after I’d touched it. Either way, it’s dead now.

So I took off semi-chasing this stupid bird. Then, out of nowhere, this anvil dropped out of the sky and fell perfectly square on my head. I was flat as a pancake! But that didn’t stop me from taking this picture as it continued to scuttle away from me, pausing to make sure I was ready for his next diabolical scheme.

Seeing that I was not giving up, the roadrunner painted a tunnel on the side of a boulder while I wasn’t looking. I did however see him run through the tunnel, so I broke into a full sprint to follow him. Unfortunately, I soon found I had charged into the side of a boulder and was pancaked once again.

At that point, I was really pissed off. That feathered fucker foiled me twice! He probably thought the third time would be a charm and that he’d finally be rid of me. I watched him attempt to run (er, fly) off the edge of a cliff (er, railing) in hopes that I would chase him. But instead of walking in mid-air as he can, I would fall to certain doom (the woods behind Z-Tejas). Not me! Not this time! I snapped my last picture and retreated to the air-conditioned car that awaited me. Us coyotes have come a long way, baby.