A Bird to Reckon With

The longer I live in New Mexico, the greater my admiration for the state's official bird, the roadrunner.

What a tough, adaptable, self-reliant, feisty little creature he is, and has to be to thrive in his harsh desert habitat.

A species of ground cuckoo, the southwestern roadrunner is famously capable of killing, and eating, rattlesnakes. He can run up to 17 miles per hour. He has adapted to his sere habitat by evolving a method of reabsorbing the water in his feces before excretion. As an avian carnivore, he feasts on the moistest available diet in the desert.
He doesn't eliminate salt through his urinary tract, but more efficiently, through a gland in his noise. He's energy efficient: cuts his activity rate 50% in the heat of the day. He's so deft and quick that he can snatch a dragonfly or hummingbird out of the air.

That's the secret to his predation of the rattlesnake. He uses his wings the way a matador uses his cape, and his lightning speed is faster than the snake's strike. Roadrunner snaps up a coiled snake by the tail, snaps it like a whip and repeatedly slams its head against the ground. He eats his prey whole, even rattlesnakes, but sometimes can't consume the entire snake at one time. That's why you often see roadrunner prancing through the desert brush with something icky dangling from his beak.

Roadrunner can fly for short distances, especially when going downhill, but prefers to run, building up speed until he can soar a short distance simply by spreading, not flapping, his wings. Energy efficiency.

He adapts quite nicely to humanity's inroads into his habitat. A friend has a roadrunner who spends every winter atop his porch light, where the bulb provides warmth and the roof provides protection from predators. A big, cocky roadrunner lives around my house and loves to taunt my dog, Saxon, by strutting along the top of the patio wall. It's comparable to the way a feral cat taunted him when we lived in another state, strutting back and forth on the other side of a sturdy chain-link fence while Saxon barked in frustration. Feral cats and roadrunners share an attitude gene, I think.

I spotted a smallish roadrunner the other day, hopping slowly across the street where I live as if he had only one leg. I've seen him several times since, and once got close enough to see that he does have two legs. One of them must be injured, because he doesn't move with the customary roadrunner speed. Deprived of his principal asset, how does he survive?

I can't answer that, but I know one thing. With a pre-existing condition like that, he'd better not try to get health insurance.

Health Care Reform? Who Needs It?

The 12-year-+old boy and his little sister were waiting for the school bus in their New York suburban community one cool, clear morning. The boy felt dizzy and queasy. "I'm going home to puke," he told his sister.
He didn't get home. He collapsed on the doorstep. There was blood. His family rushed him to a teaching hospital not five minutes away. The senior neurosurgeon and his entire support team happened to be making rounds. They cleared out two operating rooms and spent the next 16 hours saving the boy 's life.
They hadn't had time for finesse. To vacate the massive cerebral hemorrhage as quickly as possible, they simply sawed out a piece of his skull. When he was out of danger they replaced the bone with a plate of surgical steel.
The entire episode was enormously costly, but the boy's father's employer provided good health insurance and major medical coverage. It cost the family only $8,000 out of pocket.
A triumph of private health insurance in this great country.
Twice over the ensuing years, the boy's body rejected the plate in his head, which had to be replaced with new space-age materials. The boy came to know the rejection symptoms well.
The replacement procedure is a relatively simple one. Private insurance paid all the costs.
The boy became a young man and got a job and got married. His employer provided HMO health coverage.
The rejection symptoms returned., The young man went to his HMO doctor. "I'm rejecting my plate," the young man said. "I need to see a neurosurgeon." Dollar signs spun in the doctor's eyeballs. He gave the young man a bar of soap and told him to wash his head. The young man asked to see another doctor. Against the rules.
The young man went home and called the neurosurgeon who had treated him when he was a boy, covered by his father's insurance. "How much to replace my plate if I'm a private patient?" he asked. The doctor told him. The price was far beyond his reach. "Tell your HMO doctor to call me," the neurosurgeon said. "We can work something out."
The HMO doctor didn't call the neurosurgeon. Two days later the young man collapsed at work. At the emergency room of the local hospital, the doctors recognized a neurological emergency they couldn't handle. The young man was rushed by helicopter to an urban medical center 100 miles away. The young man was near death
The senior neurosurgeon and his entire support team cleared out an operating room and worked 14 hours to save his life. Save him they did, but the entire episode was enormously costly.
The HMO munificently offered to cover one-third of the bill.