Many of us are familiar with roadrunners, thanks to Looney Tune Cartoons.  Saturday mornings were made complete by a bowl of cheerios while watching the roadrunner outwit Wile E. Coyote time and again.  That roadrunner was smart, and he was fast.

In fact, roadrunners are one of the fastest running birds around.  They can speed up to 25 miles an hour and often set a pace of 15 miles per hour.  Distance wise, they’ve been known to cover up to 50 miles at a breakneck speed.

But outwitting coyotes and racing through the desert landscape are not their only claims to fame.  Roadrunners are loyal spouses and parents.  They typically mate for life and raise their young together. They are also diligent hunters. They seek out insects, spiders and even snakes; something all of us that live near-by appreciate.

Lately I’ve had the opportunity to observe roadrunners firsthand.  From my favorite chair, I have a perfect view of the desert landscape outside the window.  Nearly every day the neighborhood roadrunner scurries across the rocks, looking for the bugs and spiders that make up his diet.  He crosses back and forth, around and about, on his quest for food. His energetic search is relentless.

Until this morning.

Instead of racing across the rocks, he hopped up onto the cabinet by the window and then, with one more jump, landed in the basked of hanging flowers.  Since the flowers were plastic, it seemed unlikely that he was looking for food.  I think, perhaps, he just needed a rest.  He settled into the pink and yellow blossoms and made himself comfortable.

He lingered longer than I would have expected, but at last, jumped back to the rocks, and resumed his search for food. 

My guess is that many of us can relate a bit to the roadrunner.  We do our best to foil the troublemakers in our lives.  We work diligently to acquire food for ourselves and our families and mostly we do it without pause or complaint.

But like the roadrunner, we deserve a rest occasionally.  We need to find a bright and cheerful place to settle in and relax, if even for a few minutes.  Life is demanding and as conscientious as we are, we might need a rest now and again too.  A quiet moment in a comfortable spot could be just what we need to resume the race.