GREEN VALLEY, Ariz. — There's a special friendship blooming between a woman in Green Valley and a roadrunner. The two have truly been companions, for years.
"I was out here watering, and he showed up, and he kind of followed me around." explained Beth Surdut. She spends most of her days writing, painting, and sketching in her home studio. As an artist and storyteller, her natural curiosity for the world led to her first steps in connecting with the roadrunner when he first started stopping by her sliding glass door.
"So I went, 'Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo,' and I kept doing it," Beth recalled. "And he walked up to me with his head cocked, and I thought, 'Oh, this is so special.'"
Beyond the cuckoos, Beth began singing popular music to him, which "Roadie" as she started calling him, has always seemed to enjoy. Little did she know, their songs together would last.
After about a month of these daily visits, she got some mealworms at the advice of a friend at a bird feed store, to sprinkle on the patio.
"I thought, 'I'm never going to hand feed him. I'm not going to make him do tricks.' He makes all the rules," Beth said, but again, she didn't know what was in store, until one day when she found herself looking closely at a dried mealworm.
"I was just studying it, and I wasn't thinking. And I went, 'What do you think?'" as she offered the mealworm to Roadie. "And he said, 'I'll take that."
That was the first time he ate out of her hand, in the fall of 2023.
"After a year, he jumped in my lap," Beth explained. "He reached over and took it off of my leg."
Now, after almost two years, Roadie makes nearly daily visits. Beth says sometimes he'll stop by as many as four times a day.
"Someone actually accused me of taming Roadie. And I said, 'Wait a minute, I'm the one that's tamed. I'm the one that drops everything whenever he shows up,'" she said.
Over the years, Roadie has gone on hiatus during different nesting seasons, but he always returns.
This summer though, something was different.
"I knew something was going on," Beth said, "because instead of just taking one mealworm, he just stood there with one in his beak, looking at me, like, 'I want another one, and another one,' and that was all he could carry. And then he was running back out and giving it to the baby. Well, the baby figured out what was going on, and the baby jumped up on top of the wall at the grapefruit tree, and I swear Roadie looked at him like, 'Didn't I tell you to stay in the car?'"
Marathons of roadrunners (as groups of them are called) are unusual. They don't travel in groups, but "Rattles," the baby roadrunner, started tagging along with his dad. Now, he sometimes stops by Beth's front yard, while Roadie takes up the back, always ready for a song, a snack, and a special connection.
"I can have my moment of calmness that can last for more than a moment by watching the animals and taking care of them," Beth said. "And I think what's really important, is that we be good stewards to the desert. And if all anybody does is put out water, not food, just water, it's more than a gift. It's what keeps these creatures alive."
In Arizona, you're not supposed to feed wildlife, but birds are the exception. Of course, you can always put out water.
