Did they come before the egg or after?

Is the sky really falling?

And then there’s the big question that completely drives me crazy: why the heck did they cross the road?

You do have to wonder who started this riddle to begin with. It supposedly first appeared in print in a New York magazine, The Knickerbocker (1847):

. . . There are ‘quips and quillets’ which seem actual conundrums, but yet are none. Of such is this: ‘Why does a chicken cross the street?’ Are you ‘out of town?’ ‘Do you give it up?’ Well, then: ‘Because it wants to get on the other side!’

What’s strange about this riddle is that you expect a funny answer, but you don’t usually get one. Huh?

Whatever. All I know is, everyone seems to have an opinion:

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Aristotle: To actualize its potential.

James Cagney: It crossed twice. The dirty double-crosser.

Dick Cheney:  We need to battle the chickens overseas, so we don’t have to battle them at home.

Bill Clinton:  Define chicken.

Darwin:  Chickens, over great periods of time, have been naturally selected in such a way that they are now genetically predisposed to cross roads.

James Dean: To prove he wasn’t chicken.

Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.

Bob Dylan: The answer, my friend . . .

Amelia Earhart: She could have flown.

Martin Luther King, Jr.:  I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without having their motives called into question.

Timothy Leary: Because it was the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

Chico Marx: It couldn’t. It was a rubber chicken.

Groucho Marx:  Chicken? What’s all this talk about chicken? Why, I had an uncle who thought he was a chicken. My aunt almost divorced him, but we needed the eggs.

Harpo Marx:  Honk! Honk! Honk!

Jack Nicholson:  ‘Cause it ****** wanted to. That’s the ****** reason.

Obama:  In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of chickens, or a politics of roosters?

Oprah:  To avoid mad chicken disease.

Plato:  For the greater good.

Arnold Schwartznegger: It will be back.

The Sphinx: You tell me.

Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Walt Whitman: To cluck the song of itself.

Zsa Zsa Gabor: It probably crossed to get a better look at my legs, which thank goodness are good, dahling . . .

Live Journal friend and Dylan fan (yay!),

boreal_owl

, also posted some chicken crossing-the-road answers here.

If you’re still wondering, consult the Psychic Chicken Network.