What’s “Meep, Meep?” That’s the sound the roadrunner made when being chased by the coyote in the old “Looney Tunes” cartoons. When I was a kid, all of my pals and I would eagerly wait for the latest “Looney Tunes” cartoons and hope it was a new one featuring Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, they were our favorites! Around my ranch in central Texas, there are lots of roadrunners, but these don’t make the “Meep, Meep” sound, but a sound much like the cooing of a dove. The “Meep” sound in the cartoons, according to Wickipedia, was recorded by a man named Paul Julian.
However, Monday afternoon while I was going outside the rock house to continue my chores, I looked up, and of all things, a roadrunner was standing in the driveway. Running back into the house to get my camera, the bird had moved a little, it happened to be looking the other way and I got this “shot”.
Roadrunners are ground cuckoos, geococcyx californianus and eat lizards, mice, scorpions and snakes. In fact, roadrunners are so fast they can catch, kill and eat rattle snakes!
Monday’s roadrunner continued hunting around my front yard catching 2 grasshoppers and by standing real still, moving only my arms and the camera, I got these 2 “shots, one on the rock wall in front of the old house and the other in the front yard.
After posing for these “shots” the roadrunner ran out into the field and continued hunting, but it never said, “Meep, Meep.”