Why Did the Damn Chicken
Cross the Road?

An attempt to compile the definitive collection of answers to the immortal question which has plagued mankind since civilization began. Part of The Chicken Project.

Douglas Adams:

Forty-two.

Aristotle:

To actualize its potential.

Buddha:

If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature. On the road there is no chicken, no road, nor perception of the road, nor impulse to cross it, nor consciousness of the road, no feathers, no beak, no clawed feet, no chicken. No road, no chicken, no crossing... only the great prajnaparamita of the empty form of chicken and the empty form of the road, and that emptiness; gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond.

George H.W. Bush:

If we Americans work together, we can find the answer to this chicken thing.

Johnny Cochran:

The chicken didn't cross the road. Some chicken-hating, genocidal, lying public official moved the road right under the chicken's feet while he was practicing his golf swing and thinking about his family.

Albert Camus:

The chicken's mother had just died. But this did not really upset him, as any number of witnesses can attest. In fact, he crossed just because the sun got in his eyes.

Howard Cosell:

It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.

Salvador Dali:

A flaming giraffe.

Darwin:

It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

Jacques Derrida:

Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is dead, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Emily Dickinson:

Because it could not stop for death.

John Donne:

Send not to ask why the chicken crossed the road. He crossed for thee.

Clint Eastwood:

'Cuz it was feeling lucky... do you feel lucky, punk?

Albert Einstein:

Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Epicurus:

For fun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Sigmund Freud:

As an expression of the repressed desire to have sex with its mother. The road symbolizes the barrier presented by the cultural taboo.

Garth Algar:

Ummm... well... maybe the chicken... I gotta go now.

The Book of Genesis:

God said, "Let there be chicken"; and there was chicken. Then God said, "Let there be road"; and there was road. And God commanded, "Let the one be taken to the far side thereof." And it was done. And God looked upon God's work and saw that it was good.

Sirs William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan:

To verify through measurement and research explorational,
Asserted widths and properties of highways transportational.
And thus through brain and intellect did prove itself, this animal,
To be the very model of a modern chicken-general.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Ernest Hemingway:

To die. In the rain.

Werner Heisenberg:

We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.

Hippocrates:

Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

Sir Edmund Hillary:

Because it was there.

David Hume:

Out of custom and habit.

Carl Jung:

The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Timothy Leary:

Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

Hudi "Leadbelly" Ledbetter:

Look down, look down, that lonesome road, until you see the chicken.

Douglas MacArthur:

In order to return.

Machiavelli:

So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Karl Marx:

It was a historical inevitability.

Ogden Nash:

The chicken crossed the road with great elan,
To avoid becoming Coq au Vin.

Lord Nelson:

"I see no chicken."

Jack Nicholson:

You want to know why the chicken crossed the road?!?! You can't handle the chicken!!!

Nietzsche:

Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

Richard Nixon:

This isn't about roads and chickens. I don't think you quite understand that what you believe I may have meant isn't what you think I said.

Oliver North:

National Security was at stake.

Rev. Ian Paisley:

Members of the Orange Chicken Order must exercise their right to cross Catholic roads. If we are stopped by the authorities we will stay here until our eggs hatch.

Plato:

For the greater good.

General David Petraeus:

When the chicken is at a point that the conditions are met to recommend crossing the road, then that's what it will do.

Princess Diana:

To escape from the paparazzi.

Pyrrho the Skeptic:

What road?

Ronald Reagan:

I forget.

Donald Rumsfeld:

As you know, you cross the road with the chicken you have. It's not the chicken you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Tomás de Torquemada:

Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Jean-Paul Sartre:

In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

William Shakespeare:

Tell me where lies fancy's egg,
In the breast or in the leg?

B.F. Skinner:

Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.

Kenneth Starr:

I believe members of the Secret Service will testify before the Grand Jury that the President deliberately asked the chicken to deny that it crossed the road.

John Sununu:

The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.

The Sphinx:

You tell me.

Mr. T:

I pity the fool who don't cross the road when they see me coming!

Henry David Thoreau:

To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.

Mark Twain:

The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Lao Tse:

The chicken that crossed the road is not the eternal chicken.

The Duke of Wellington:

The road was crossed on the playing fields of Eton.

E.O. Wilson:

Under the influence of a road-crossing gene, selected because it conferred a survival advantage in the chicken's ancestral line. We could conjecture, for example, that crossing roads represents the transfer of a behavioral trait whereby some chickens sought to distance themselves from rivals, thereby distinguishing them in the eyes of potential mates and increasing their reproductive potential.

Ludwig Wittgenstein:

The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Molly Yard:

It was a hen!

Zen Master:

What is the sound of one chicken crossing?

Zeno of Elea:

To prove it could never reach the other side.

About the Chicken Project

Originally titled simply "Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?", this document has been circulating since the 'net began. This hypertext document is an attempt to create the definitive collection of answers to the questions, "Why Did the Damn Chicken Cross the Damn Road?" Know of any? Email oedipus@hicom.net

Multifarious thanks to: Benard Long, Kathy Krause, Travis Marshall, and the inimitable Helen Shapiro.

comments? corrections? criticism?
email oedipus@hicom.net

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created September 26, 1996
last updated April 10, 2008