My sister Shauna and her husband recently moved to St George, in the southwest corner of Utah, where they are surrounded by stunning ocher, orange and vermillion cliffs and mountains, as well as various critters and varmints...creeping, crawling, hopping, darting, running, and flying…startling everyone who happens to cross their paths while trudging through the Mars-like landscape.

For her birthday card, I couldn't help but think of the Looney Toons Roadrunner, speeding through  similar desert scenes, ever elusive of the hapless coyote, who could never seem to make his acquisitions from ACME work quite as expected in the never ending pursuit of his prey.  Like the roadrunner, birthdays seem to arrive like a blinding flash, faster every year!!