Revisiting The Badass State Bird of New Mexico

 January 4, 2026

   As you know, I have some damn zany friends. And one them produced one of the funniest history pieces we have ever run in True West magazine and it was about this guy:

The Bad Boy State Bird of New Mexico

   Here is a taste of Paul Andrew Hutton's take the State Bird of New Mexico in the May of 2012 issue: "Roadrunner eats rattlesnakes for lunch and packrats for dinner. Roadrunner loves nothing better than a centipede or scorpion for breakfast. Sometimes Roadrunner snacks on tarantulas. . .now Roadrunner is not a common creature, such as other state birds, like the puny cactus wren in New Mexico's former Western province Arizona, or the loud, obnoxious Mockingbird to the east in the former Republic of Texas. Roadrunner is one badass, tough character (in fact, its bird family is the Cuculidae, which translates as badass—well, not really, but it should.)"

 Here's a link, below, to our past issues in the True West archives. When you get to the issues, scroll down to May of 2012, load the flip book issue and click to the piece (splash page, above)

Paul Hutton's History of New Mexico's Badass Bird

"All kinds of violence on the TV. You're not supposed to watch violence on the TV. Children, they can't watch it 'cause they're afraid maybe the kids will copy something they see on the TV. I can't even get a funny cartoon anymore because some 12-year-old somewhere watched a particularly violent episode of the Roadrunner-Coyote show, and the next day, they found him at the bottom of a canyon, two giant springs strapped to his feet."

—Norm MacDonald