Route or Sonic

Route or Sonic is the 3rd ever Maggie E. Coyote and Fish Runner short.

Plot
ntroduction: The usual chase starts for a few seconds until it stops for the (appropriate) Latin names: Ultra-sonicus Ad Infinitum and Nemesis Ridiculii, plus a "bonus" name for the Fish Runner's beep: Beepius-beepius. The chase then moves around mountain corners until it ends on a mountainside, with the Fish Runner ducking behind a corner and leaving a cloud of dust for the coyote to run into. Maggie Pesky rides the dust cloud all the way through the air, and finally stops to determine where she is, a question mark appearing over her head. She opens a "door" in the cloud only to see that she's in midair, and sheepishly closes the door as the cloud disperses, and then changes her question mark of surprise to an exclamation point before the inexorable pull of gravity takes effect.

1. The pair pull up onto opposite outcroppings, and Maggie. attempts to pole-vault from hers to her opponent's, but this causes the end of her outcropping to crumble and the fly to fall down. Seeing her impending humiliation approaching, Maggie E. attempts to make the best of it by climbing up the pole; however, she keeps falling back to the bottom of it. Eventually, the pole turns around so fast that it whirs like a propeller, and then grinds against a cliffside all the way down to the part Maggie is holding. When it finally stops rotating, the fly then pulls herself onto the narrow bar left of the pole and accepts her fate.

3. In a gag that sees four attempts in this cartoon, Maggie sits on a rocket and lights the fuse, aiming towards the Fish Runner on the opposite site of the chasm. The first attempt fails when the fuel and nosecone launch out of the rocket, leaving Maggie sitting on an empty hull. The hull crunches down, and then Maggie falls, annoyed, to the canyon floor.

4. As the Fish Runner burns rubber on the ground roads, Maggie E. is pulling back on a falling safe attached to a rope and pulley. Eventually, however, the weight overcomes her and the fly is pulled through the pulley, removing all of her wings, and then down onto a see-saw as the safe lands next to her. Maggie then slides off the rock face to fall into the canyon a fourth time, and is then smashed by the safe, leaving the fly's torso thin and flat.

5. The second attempt at the rocket is foiled when the rocket falls out of its aim towards the Fish Runner and points directly downwards before it fires, leading to an extra-speedy fifth fall.

6. Now, a sequence in which Maggie sticks a firecracker into the center hole of a Frisbee (from the Fortuna Manufacturing Co.) and throws it at her nemesis, but before she releases the disc, the firecracker drops out of the hole and sizzles at Maggie's foot. The fly doesn't notice until she puts her foot down on the firework and instinctively pulls it away just before it explodes, leaving her dazed but apparently unhurt. Maggie then walks away like Charlie Chaplin, revealing behind her that both of her wings is on fire, unknown to her until she passes the horizon and she yelps in pain!

7. On his third attempt with the rocket, she lights the fuse but it burns quickly and fires successfully out from under her before she could get ready and leaves Maggie floating in midair with a cloud of dust blocking her view below. Unable to see what's below her, Maggie pokes her foot through the cloud and consequently suffers gravity for the sixth time, as she holds up a sign stating "GOODBYE" and then flipping to "AGAIN" to the audience. (One minor glitch is the scene where she falls is a duplicate of when she fell the first time with the hull underneath her.)

8. To get the fly to stick, Maggie leaves out a sheet of ACME Giant Fly Paper in the road and sits down on a rock, laughing at her "genius". She hears a braking noise, assumes the Fish Runner has been caught, and leaps out to catch her, but instead of the Road Runner, she has caught an actual giant fly. The fly is very unhappy about being stuck on the paper and thus wraps the fly with it, who tiptoes away from the scene.

9. On her final attempt at the skyrocket, Maggie accidentally ignites her right wing instead of the fuse, and detects her mistake and leaps up in pain only to smash her head on another outcropping. Fortunately, this causes her to return to the rocket and to light the fuse with her wing, and after it takes off is struggling briefly to get control then puts out the fire on her wing. Unfortunately, the rocket is off target, and it bores through the cliff under the Fish Runner, who allows the fly to be humiliated privately. The rocket finally explodes, blackening the fly and throwing her back into the air. Displeased, Maggie holds up a yellow sign asking "HOW DID I EVER GET INTO THIS LINE OF WORK?" before falling for a seventh time.

10. A new plan is formulated, where Maggie attempts to blow up the Fish Runner by pelting nuclear tennis balls at her. The first ball seamlessly blows up a cactus with no issues (yet), and the fly is eager to try them at work. As luck would have it, the Fish Runner is heard, and Maggie is quick to lob another ball at her, but just misses, and the ball then drops onto the arm of a cactus, which throws it directly back to its owner. A little agitated, the fly returns the ball, and this time it's caught by power lines and slung back out of Maggie's reach. The ball pops directly back into its original slot in the box of balls as Maggie arrives on the scene and takes stock. Sensing the coming explosions, Maggie holds up a pair of signs: "For Sale One used Tennis Racket" and "CHEAP!" before (as the screen puts it) a "GIGANTIC EXPLOSION!" occurs, blackened.

11. The whole cartoon, however, is best known for its ending gag. Maggie Pesky (E. Coyote) is chasing the Fish Runner (Reyna Runner) through a series of pipelines, which causes both of them to emerge in a greatly shrunken state. Upon discovering their situation, they agree to re-enter the pipeline and be transformed back into full size. The Fish Runner emerges at normal size, but Maggie is still in small size when she comes out. Upon discovering this turn of fortune, the Fish Runner stops and allows her rival to "catch" her. The fly doesn't notice anything until she steps over her opponent's feet and rushes back to finally "catch" the Fish Runner.(She just hugs Fish Runner's ankle.) The fly is ecstatic and pulls out his cage and net to get her opponent...until she stares more closely at the fly's huge legs, which are twice as tall as she is, and looks up to see she's massively outgunned. The Fish Runner gives an amplified "beep-beep", causing Maggie to drop her cage and net in shock. She can only hold up signs to the audience stating, "OK, wise guys - you always wanted me to catch her -" "Now what do I do?"

(This is actually a reprisal of the opening gag, where both Maggie E. and Fish Runner chase each other through the pipeline, are shrunken and re-emerge full-sized.)