I love Looney Tunes. Always have. Bugs Bunny is probably my favorite cartoon character of all time, but there was another character for whom I developed an enormous amount of sympathy: Wile E. Coyote.

Yes, I know. He was technically the villain. His entire purpose in life was to catch and presumably eat the Road Runner. That’s generally frowned upon, particularly when the intended meal is one of the title characters. But I never really saw Wile E. as the villain. I saw him as the underdog.

Think about what the poor guy was up against. The Road Runner didn’t merely outrun him. That would have been fair. Wile E. was battling a bird who apparently possessed the ability to bend the laws of physics whenever those laws became inconvenient. Wile E. could paint a tunnel on the side of a mountain, attempt to run through it and smash face-first into solid rock. Then the Road Runner would come along and run straight through the exact same painted tunnel.

Wile E. could chase him off a cliff, only to discover himself standing hundreds of feet above the desert with absolutely nothing beneath his feet. The Road Runner could stand there perfectly comfortably. Wile E. would look down, and suddenly gravity would remember that it had a job to do. Apparently the laws of physics didn’t apply until you noticed you were breaking them.

Then there were the plans. Wile E. Coyote may have been the greatest customer in the history of the ACME Corporation. I have no idea where an unemployed desert coyote got the money for rockets, giant magnets, enormous rubber bands, explosives, catapults and enough other military-grade hardware to concern several federal agencies, but the deliveries never stopped.

And sometimes his plans were brilliant. That’s what bothered me. Wile E. would occasionally devise something that absolutely, positively, unquestionably had to work. There was no possible way the Road Runner could escape. Then the Road Runner would do something completely insane, trot away unharmed and offer that infuriating little “beep beep” on his way out.

There was something smart-assed about that bird. He wasn’t merely winning. He seemed to know the universe was on his side, and he flaunted it. That beep-beep felt less like a bird call and more like trash talk. Meanwhile, Wile E. would be standing there holding a tiny umbrella while a 10-ton boulder plummeted toward his head.

I wanted him to win. Just once.

I didn’t actually want him to eat the Road Runner. Even as a kid, I imagined a different ending. Somehow, Wile E. would finally execute the perfect plan. No malfunctioning ACME product. No suddenly disappearing road. No convenient tunnel. No temporary suspension of Newtonian physics. He’d have the Road Runner cornered with absolutely nowhere to go, and after all those years, Wile E. Coyote would finally have won.

Then I think he’d let him go.

Because what else could he do? The Road Runner needed the Coyote, and the Coyote needed the Road Runner. Without the chase, neither one of them had much of a reason to get up in the morning. Wile E. would step aside, the Road Runner would look at him, and for once they would both know exactly what had happened.

Then that obnoxious bird would probably grin, give him one more “beep beep” and take off down the highway. Wile E. would order another ridiculous contraption from ACME, and the chase would begin all over again.

Which would have been fine with me. Because Wile E. never really needed to catch the Road Runner.

He just deserved to know that he could.

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Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.