p. 797 | The Road-Runner

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 30, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 50.

The Road-Runner.

CASSIN mentions a remarkable circumstance relating to the character of the California road-runner. This bird seems to have a mortal hatred of rattlesnakes, and no sooner sees one of these reptiles than it sets about in what, to the snake, might well seem a most diabolical way of compassing its death. Finding the snake asleep, it at once seeks out the spiniest of the small cacti, the prickly pear, and with infinite pains and quietness, carries the leaves, after breaking them off, and puts them in a circle around the slumbering snake. When it has made a sufficient wall about the object of all this care, it rouses its victim with a sudden peck of its sharp beak, and then quickly retires to let the snake work out its own destruction—a thing it eventually does in a way that ought to gratify the road-runner if it have any sense of humor. Any one watching it would say it was expressing the liveliest emotion with its constantly and grotesquely moving tail.

The first impulse and act of the assaulted snake is to coil for a dart; its next, to move away. It quickly realizes that it is hemmed in in a circle, and finally makes a rash attempt to glide over the obstruction. The myriad of tiny needles prick it and drive it back. The angry snake, with small wisdom, attempts to retaliate by fastening its fangs into the offending cactus. The spines fill its mouth. More angry still, it again and again assaults the prickly wall, until, quite beside itself with rage, it seems to lose its wits completely, and, writhing and twisting horribly, buries its envenomed fangs into its own body, dying finally from its self-inflicted wounds. After the catastrophe, the road-runner indulges in a few gratified flirts of its long tail, and goes off, perchance, to find its reward in being run down by hounds set on by men.—Good Health.