R is for rabbits and roadrunners

We have lots of both these critters in the desert.  Surprisingly, they aren’t predators of each other.  The rabbits eat grass and other green bushes they find in the desert.  Roadrunners usually stick with lizards and other small prey.

The rabbits always find a way into our yard to get at the lawn.  The back is walled in but the front isn’t.  Rabbits eat all day long.  It’s amazing they can eat so much.  They can also make themselves skinny enough to fit between the pickets in the gate and through the Y-block we have as drains.  Their bones must be very pliable.

 He must have been hot

The other day I caught this one in the water dish cooling off.

 

Here's a jackrabbit napping in the front yard

 This roadrunner is hunting in our backyard

 

The roadrunners are predators looking for meat, usually eating lizards, bugs, small snakes and other small prey.  They come by about every month or two and are here a few days before moving on to other parts of their territory.  Usually they come alone, but I have seen them in pairs.  We have some very smart lizards here that must be on the lookout for them because some of them are actually quite big and fat. 

 Roadrunner

Roadrunners have wicked looking teeth, very sharp and fang-like.  They capture their prey in those teeth and then beat it to death on the block wall, or other large rocks.  They roam around the desert freely and have quite a big territory.