Photographer Captures Coyote Carrying a Roadrunner in Southern California

A real-life coyote has briefly achieved what Wile E. Coyote never could: catching a roadrunner. Alexander DeBarros, a Southern California bird watcher, photographed the scene on August 29 while conducting a bird survey at the Chatsworth Nature Preserve. The image shows a coyote carrying a roadrunner bird in its mouth. Boing Boing described the photograph as rare and possibly unprecedented. Its timing added an unusual layer to the sighting: DeBarros captured it during the opening weekend of “Acme vs. Coyote,” a film about the Looney Tunes cartoon series in which Wile E. Coyote repeatedly attempts—and fails—to catch the Road Runner. In the cartoons, those attempts typically end with the coyote being blown up, falling from cliffs, or suffering other elaborate mishaps. The photograph, by contrast, documents an actual coyote with the bird it had caught, though the source does not provide further details about what happened afterward. The coincidence extends into DeBarros’s family. His father, Brian Mainolfi, is an animator whose first job in the field was working for Chuck Jones, the creator and director of the Roadrunner cartoon series. The source does not identify how the photograph was received by the film’s publicists or provide additional information about the coyote, the roadrunner, or the bird survey.