The Roadrunner

    I've struggled with nausea for months now, ranging from a faint unease in my stomach to sudden vomiting. I wrote about that in my journal, but have decided not to write about it on my blog this time. Instead, I'll tell a funny little anecdote from one of our trips to Arizona. 

    Matt has a doctor friend at work that has a beautiful vacation home in Paradise Valley, Arizona. He has invited us to stay there many times, so we finally did... twice within a couple of months. My parents were in Mesa temporarily for an LDS mission, so we visited with them. The second time we went because Matt wanted to go on a small trip to celebrate the completion of my radiation.

    On the first trip, we hoped to see a roadrunner but didn't (as Matt likes to say, we're "bird nerds.") On the second, Matt saw a couple and tried to point them out to me, but they were too fast. After Matt went to sleep one night, I made a plan to go to the botanical gardens the next day, knowing that a lot of the desert plants would be starting to bloom and we would probably see some birds.

We went in the morning to beat the heat (over 100 degrees at times), and saw a huge variety of cool cacti and bright flowers. We tried to go to something called the "butterfly pavilion," but it was closed off for some reason. Later on, we noticed that the gate was no longer closed, but there was now a long line building up, with no shade under the heat of the outdoor sun. Matt said that waiting in that line was not something I should do, and I reluctantly agreed. I'm more sensitive to heat than I have ever been before.

So we sat on a bench under the shade to rest instead. We watched a couple of cactus wrens hopping from branch to branch and down to the dry, sandy ground. They were interacting very loudly--we think one of them might have been trying to attract a mate.

And then it happened--a roadrunner appeared right in front of us. It was large, with a very long tail and brown-and-white-striped coloring. Its head looked kind of like a chicken with a distinctive mohawk and a longer beak. Its body was slender and streamlined. 

 Suddenly, a hummingbird flew nearby, and the roadrunner lunged towards it in an acrobatic flip-twist. It snapped its beak, but the hummingbird flew away. We both gasped as we witnessed this and continued holding still. I didn't care about missing the butterflies anymore. 

 A small family approached, and the mother asked what we were looking at. "Stop there if you want to see a roadrunner!" Matt said. They did, and then the woman asked half-jokingly if it really makes the "meep meep" sound, like the cartoon. 

Matt responded sarcastically. "Yes, it actually does."  

"Nooo." I said, laughing. I didn't know for sure, but my intuition and knowledge of birds said that it didn't. 

A few seconds later, after the family left, Matt and I heard a faint sound. "Meep meep!"

Matt and I looked at each other, jaws wide open between ear-to-ear smiles. It must have been the roadrunner, and I was completely shocked that it actually DID make that noise. Matt laughed heartily. He was just as surprised as me that his sarcastic remark seemed to be correct.

After cooling down in the gift shop, we saw another roadrunner. It was farther away this time, so we used our binoculars. It held in its beak a limp, presumably dead animal, probably a lizard, which it was beating against a rock. "What's it doing? Tenderizing the meat?" Matt joked.

I was fascinated by these roadrunners, so I later looked them up in a bird app called Merlin, which has recordings of the sounds each bird makes. Sadly, I found that the roadrunner does NOT, in fact, make the iconic "meep meep" sound! It actually sounds more like a chicken. 

When I told Matt, he was disappointed but amused, like I was. 

It's funny to think about all the emotions you can go through in a day--from awe and delight to disappointment and mild amusement. Life likes to throw a variety of these emotions at you and see how you respond. 

Right now I feel grateful for interesting experiences like this, and the ability to write about them.