Most of you, I surmise, will be familiar with the Road Runner cartoons in which the unfortunate Coyote is forever chasing the Road Runner with scant success. No matter what ruses he uses to catch his quarry, the outcome is forever the same. Not content with merely chasing him, he orders all manner of devices through the mail, but the Road Runner by speed or guile avoids capture and everything backfires on his pursuer. Even before he launches his schemes we know the Coyote is doomed to failure and they will backfire on him, so that he blows himself up, finds himself pursued by a train or falls over a cliff.
When he finds himself outwitted, but before the ultimate disaster, an expression of almost resignation comes over the unhappy creature's face and, when you have seen enough of these cartoons, you begin to feel something approaching sympathy for the Coyote.
You wish that maybe he could win just once and catch the Road Runner, yet you know that this will never happen, because, as his intentions are clearly prandial, if once he captures him there can be no further cartoons.
However, I have now discovered that at least this is no reflection of reality. It turns out that Coyotes are in fact faster than Road Runners. Therefore, the cartoon character's sad pursuit in no way mirrors what actually happens when a real coyote pursues a real road runner.
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