Desert Images

These grainy photos, I hope, speak for themselves. They were shot over the past few days outside of Tucson. We saw bunnies, coyotes, deer, and road-runners.

Who the hell would have imagined road-runners outside of an animated cartoon? It turns out they live in the southwestern U.S. and Mexico and a bit into Central America. I've simply led too sheltered a life to have known that -- until now.

I did not actually see one myself but one of my colleagues did, in fact he saw three. Apparently they can grow to two feet in height, and although they are capable of flight, they usually act much as they do in cartoons, simply outrunning any predators who show up in the open desert air.

Anyone who has ever watched a cowboy movie (which is everyone alive on earth by now, except perhaps the pathetic victims of North Korea's absurd dictatorship), would instantly recognize the scenes of the countryside where I have been since the middle of last week.

Movie studios in fact share a facility near here from which to shoot their flicks. Perception. Reality. This is the background for so many fantasies.

But the cacti don't know, the coyotes don't know, the road-runners are clueless. Only you and I, fellow humans, know how we have used their ecological niche as a set. I wonder whether the creatures who survive the coming global climate calamity will get a hold of the images we leave behind?

Somehow it comforts me to imagine an audience of road-runners, pausing for a moment at an outdoor theater, as a desert butterfly pushes the button, releasing the soundtrack and the moving image on the big screen -- yes, the show must go on.

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