Being Roadrunner [05/02/2026]

[8min]

Let’s state the obvious: I am bodily human. When I say “I am a roadrunner” I do not refer to my physical body. I refer to a set of experiences that I share with a niche mostly-online community of animal-people, the therianthropes. We experience instincts that are abnormal for a human being, mental shifts (a change to a more animal-like mindset), we experience odd perceptual experiences such as extranumerary phantom limbs (sensations of non-physical limbs, that may feel very real to us!) or sensory shifts (the impression of a change in the ability to perceive, most likely just an intense focus on one sense). There are many terms we use to describe these experiences, a few just above. We used to call ourselves weres, as in werecreatures, werewolves, werebears, werebirds, and our linguo tends to be built around these myths, hence the “shifts”. But none of us, at least in any way anyone can prove, are able to truly shapeshift bodily into another creature (to our great displeasure).

This page is a simple list of many of the ways I experience my therianthropy. I have written this to try and describe as closely as I can how these actually feel, instead of just saying, for exemple, “I feel wings”.

Phantom body :

My phantom body is rather weak. I know of therianthropes who feel as if their phantom limbs are as vivid as their physical ones, but it is not my case. The main feeling I have when mmy phantom body let itself be known is a tingling sensation where the phantom body connects to the physical one. I can feel to an extent the hard parts of limbs. I would best describe it like the feeling of spending a whole day on roller blades, and suddenly removing them. Your body is still used to having an extra part, that disappears, and it feels odd, and lacking. The tingling sensation becomes more intense if something intersects with my phantom body, such as clothes, or something putting their hand through it.

Here is a list of phantom body parts I have felt:

Beak : Rather common. Proportionally sized to a human head, it juts forward. I can gauge how far it goes by putting my hand in front of my face, as the tingling sensation stops bothering me once my hand is far enough. However, I also instinctively somewhat “know” where it should end. It feels hard. I liken it to if my teeth had emerged from my lips into a hard cone, yet that is also not quite correct, as it feels much more anchored to my skull than teeth currently are. It is mildly bothersome, as my eyes expect a beak and there is none. It is also somewhat soothing to feel, paradoxically, as it feels natural.

Bird toes: Very common. Funny one to cite, but strangely critical to my identity. I do not feel, typically, the front two toes, that meld with my physical, plantigrade human foot. I however feel the two back toes emerging from my heel. This is, obviously, a deeply incorrect place for bird toes to be, but the whole anatomy of my legs are so different that I suppose some incorrect placements are unavoidable. I do not feel it much, and cannot move it much of my own accord. Few extant birds have this toe arrangement, called “zygodactyl”, mainly the groups of cuckoos, of which I belong, woodpeckers, owls and parrots. Rarely, instead of being on my feet, they appear on my hands, like a second thumb. I theorize it is because grasping limbs in birds are analogous to human hands.

Wings :The favorite child of bird phantom limbs. Winged humans are usually depicted as having wings on their back. It is not my case. My wings overlap my arms, most frequently. Sometimes, they may strangely overlap my shoulders, but not follow my arms, however this is unpleasant. The main structure of the wing is simply my arm, and I can feel the rigid carpometacarpus and phalanxes superposed to my hands. Holding my hand flat, thumb up, tends to feel the most natural to overlap with this. I also feel the shafts of the feathers along my hand and forearm, mainly the flight feathers. If I am arms open in the wind, I feel as if my arms should face the resistance of the air, like holding a kite. I often fantasize about owning a pair of cosplay wings, to make those feelings more real.

Various cover feathers: These feel similar to how my mammalian therianthrope peers describe fur, maybe slightly more rigid. Once again, I mostly feel the shaft of the down or cover feathers. I feel those most frequently on my torso, neck, and head, mostly due to feeling an epidermal sensation tied to feeling as if my feathers lift up. This is most present with the raising and lowering of a crest, on my head, which tends to follow excitement or interest in something, and my back and neck, which tends to happen when sunning myself. I also feel facial bristle feathers, somewhat akin to whiskers.

Tail feathers: Common. This feels most similar to how you might depict a rigid dinosaur tail, but most of the movement is very close to the body. I can move this one intentionally, and amuse myself with doing so when it is present. It is much easier to wag it left to right than to fan it, however. I can feel the phantom pull of muscles. You could probably feel close to how I feel by putting a ball joint on your coccyx and attaching to it a few light plastic rods, so that they can sway. This tail tends to instinctively counterbalance when I walk, and lift up and down. I have seldom felt it fan.

Phantom organs: It is hard to classify this one fully as phantom or simply an instinctual knowledge, considering it is internal. My main, and most bothersome one is a feeling of phantom air sacks. Birds have a different breathing system to humans, and it leaves me often feeling half choked. I was convinced, as a child, that something was wrong with how I breathed, such as asthma. But I have no such problems, so it appears it is simply my distaste for the mammalian breathing system. I could put eye pinning here too, feeling mostly as if you were trying to flex your eyes. I do not think it does anything visually from an external point of view, but I sometimes do it instinctively. I envy the one german person who was shown to be able to contract or expend his pupils at will.

Prey drive: I feel a prey drive toward smaller critter. This mostly goes to reptiles and insects, but something as big as a cat or a rabbit can occasionally cause it. This is a very mechanical feeling, akin to catching something that is coming toward your face. This instinct could be shared with humans, who are after all omnivorous, with their closest cousins being known to hunt. However, my peculiar focus on insects and reptiles isn’t common. It feels most as a desire to stalk and grasp. Without a beak, I cannot catch things like a roadrunner should, so I resort to my hands. It does feel a bit odd, and I most usually imagine myself grasping things through my mouth. I own a hinged bird mask, for the purpose of manipulating objects through something more instinctive (it however lacks the ability to transfer items from the beak to my actual mouth due to the lower “palate”, something I aim to fix). I obviously lack the neck dexterity to catch insects with said hinged mask, however.

Flight: Another one that is very hyped up in birds! It is rather weak for me. It mostly come into play when I want to go up something I’d need to climb as a human, or down a steep slope. It feels like a frustration of not being able to take the intended path, and a tendency to see paths in 3D where other do not. I also feel the phantom of flight muscle flexing sometimes if I am imagining flapping up, and I can “gauge” whether it would be worth the effort. Often, contrarily to popular imagination, it is not. I am often very comfortable low to the ground, but I do often wish I could perch to rest or observe my surrounding. I enjoy climbing as an activity, to reach higher spots.

Courting instincts: I experience a nesting season when it gets warmer. It may start as early as march, but usually takes full hold in may. It may end as late as October, but usually ends in august. It is very linked to whether it is hot outside or not. While I am not proactive about sexual or romantic attraction in the winter, I start to crave it a lot more in the summer. This attraction tends to differ from human norm, including a lot of instinct to bring food (sometimes interpreted as human food, sometimes not), and sometimes gifts of nesting material, as well as posturing. I tend to dress more colorful in the summer than the winter, and tend to find color attractive. I tend to feel blue if I end the summer season without having “succeeded”, but it is in general a bit of a confusing feeling since human courtship is not equivalent to a bird like one. I have noticed I tend to emotionally register most close friends as similar in some way to a partner, even though I can cognitively recognize the difference.

Territorial or bonding calls: I tend to feel the urge to make vocalizations alike my theriotype. It is for the most part beak clacking and cooing (territorial call / call to a mate). I however call less than what a roadrunner would. Many of the calls I try to make simply frustrate me, because they do not sound correct. It is also something I tend to mask, due to it being not very well seen by peers as I grew up.

Seasonality: While I am still bird-like in winter, it tends to be subdued. Most of my bird-like feelings in winter involve wanting to get out of the way of the rain and cold, and food motivation.

General body movements: If I am birdier than usual, I will commonly start doing quick head movements to observe things. I may like talking less. I will think less verbally, and feel more present in the moment. It is usually rather pleasant. I do also get very bird-like if I get startled sometimes however, in which case it makes me more skittish, and can provoke involuntarily alarm calls. It is rather rare, and I have made involuntarily alarm calls while entirely slipping into a bird like state only a few times in my life, usually when I was too confused momentarily to understand what was going on (ex : one time all the power in my apartment suddenly went off).

[Roadrunner engraving by Terry Norvell : "Gotcha"]