The Road-Runner’s Gender Apparently I’m the only one who thinks the Roadrunner in the Warner Brothers’ Coyote-and-Roadrunner cartoons is female. It came up in conversation one evening, and after an online poll I’ve had to face the truth: I just plain got it wrong. 2nd best argument that the Roadrunner is male (from a woman): “They’re all male in those cartoons.” Best argument (from a gold-plated geek): There was an episode where Wile E. Coyote created a decoy dressed up as a female to lure his prey to certain doom. He provided the episode title and release date.
My argument was: there have been many cases in my life when I had a clever idea to solve a complicated problem that blew up in my face. In almost all of those cases, the person standing there shaking her head like, “I told you so!” was female. That’s what the Roadrunner is usually doing. Therefore, with high probability, she’s female.
When he heard this, the Old Engineer looked down at me and said, with infinite sympathy, “Joe, I think the artists intended the audience to identify with the Roadrunner.”