Illustration by Chris Philpot.
BUT ABOUT THOSE JACKALOPES …
Mary Hunt Webb turned to online chat rooms for company during the pandemic and enjoyed getting to know people from all over the country. One day, they were discussing changes each had noticed during isolation. “I mentioned that I had seen an increase in the frequency of roadrunners and lizards in our Albuquerque neighborhood,” Hunt Webb said. “I thought the increase was because fewer people were out and about.” Sounds reasonable to us, but one of the other participants was gobsmacked. “Roadrunners are real?” she asked. “I thought they were fictional.” Hey, lady, not only are they real, but they’re also our official state bird. (Don’t tell Coyote. Meep meep!)
AN OLD BUT NEW NEWSPAPER
Santa Fe native Bill Gallagher lives in Orange, California, where he’s friends with Richard Chang, a contributor to the Voice of OC news site. Chang once worked in Santa Fe, but when Gallagher called up his online bio, it said that Chang had worked for The Santa Fe Mexican. Hmm. The Santa Fe NEW Mexican is one of the oldest newspapers in the American West, so maybe it could get away with dropping the “new,” but we don’t see that happening.
HOUSE-HUNTING HITCH
Kelly Pabon and her husband, Alex, plan to move to New Mexico from Pennsylvania this summer, so are shopping for houses online. Imagine their surprise when they stumbled upon a D.R. Horton ad showing one with … saguaros in the yard. One more time: Those only grow in Arizona and Mexico. “Can’t wait to be there,” Kelly says, “even without the cacti!”
HAVE A “MISSING” MOMENT?
Send it to fifty@nmmagazine.com, or Fifty, New Mexico Magazine, 495 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, NM 87501. Include your name, hometown, and state. ¡Gracias!