by Kevin Campkin

Created on: January 04, 2007   Last Updated: February 02, 2010

If you really think about it (and being your average lazy and whimsical young person, I have), a lot of mankind's greatest conundrums include, in some way, a chicken. I'm thinking about that great question about 'What came first, the chicken or the egg?'

For years and years people in pubs, classrooms, alleyways, debating chambers, moments of discomfort with a partner's parents and shoe shops have wondered - what did come first, the chicken or the egg? Are we to believe, taking Christianity as an example, that at one point in the past there was a Virgin Hen? Who, created by some sort of poultry deity, then proceeded to lay the first egg but not before being tempted by a small and mischievous ferret who nudged her in the direction of a vat of tar and an old pillowcase to learn about the concept of being feathered.

Damned by this unknown entity (who depending on your nationality could conceivably be either Colonel Saunders or Bernard Manning), the Virgin Hen went on to invent light bulbs, the typewriter, aspirin, heroin, Wal-Mart, Ancient Greek and toothpaste. Her offspring ended up ignored by a society it was trying to change and wound up destitute in a shopping centre, playing a tin whistle and doing humorous impersonations of the future Jay Leno, unfortunately not realising its clairvoyant powers... well, you get the idea. I know I'm crossing various Biblical wires here and I have a feeling I'm treading some dangerous ground...

So, why DID the chicken cross the road? Well, perhaps we should first ask 'DID the chicken cross the road?' Seriously, we've been brought up with that question, we've been conditioned to think automatically that chickens (when they aren't defecating out breakfast for humans) are spending all of their time jaywalking.

I have never seen a chicken cross a road. I've never even seen the remains of a chicken that attempted such a feat. And if anyone has ever seen, or read about, or been intimate with a chicken they will be able to tell you that chickens are (at best) monumentally stupid.

I mean, they aren't so silly as to take something that isn't historical fact and believe it to be true, but they are unable to take more than three steps forward without forgetting where they are going and instantly change direction to give them the opportunity to forget whilst facing a completely different way. Watching a free-range chicken in a pen is a bit like watching three blind mice in a glass cage.

There is no way any chicken has ever made it as far as a road. I've never seen a chicken pancake and I can't imagine why a chicken would want to run that risk of indecisiveness whilst a huge vehicle bears down on them mercilessly.

What came first, the chicken or the egg? Why did the chicken cross the road? The simple answers - it didn't and they don't. It just goes to show, you shouldn't believe everything you read.

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