"You must be very well-read", says Jeffrey.
"I was reading Shakespeare and Chaucer when I was ten." He doesn't appear to be affecting modesty. He really doesn't seem to care. "so, anyway, tell me please about this roadrunner cartoon."
"There's no dialogue, just music and sound effects", say I. And each episode is about this coyote chasing after the roadrunner, using all kinds of weird inventions, like rocket shoes and special dynamite, but he never catches the roadrunner, who says nothing but beep-beep.
"Hence, Beep-beep yer ass", says François.
"Exactly"
"Is there such a bird as a roadrunner?"
"Here I just found it", says Carl, offering his phone to pass around. It is a very plain looking bird, brown or black and white stripes with a crest and rather long legs.
Carl takes back his phone and reads out loud "It is a member of the cuckoo family of birds, but unlike the European and other species of cuckoo, roadrunners are not brood parasites. They build there own nests and lay and incubate their eggs and raise their own young."
"So the roadrunner is a cuckoo but it raises its own chicks", says George. "Very interesting."
"Here it says", says Carl, "That many species of cuckoo lay their eggs in other birds nests for them to incubate and raise their young for them."
"Do they get paid?"
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