Why Does a Chicken Cross the Road ?

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1070, 6 September 1930, Page 18

Why Does a Chicken Cross the Road ?

XTOW many poultry owners, X wonder, whose chickens keep rushing from hedge to hedge for no apparent reason can give a satisfactory explanation of why they do this? It is a problem that has long puzzled mankind, and perhaps we cannot do better than try to solve it today i writes Mr. Maurice Lane, in the -Daily Mail”). For this purpose let us take a typical chicken and carefully mark it with an X to distinguish it from other typical chickens, such as unmarked Buff Orpingtons and Rhode Island Beds. This done, we will place this plainly marked chicken on a section of the Brighton Road just outside Purley, ns shown in the diagram in the next column. Very well. What happens? Well, by wisely taking shelter behind a tree we are able to avoid being run over by several rich bankrupts and impoverished theatrical backers, and nothing really untoward occurs except that we are struck on the shoulder by a bottle thrown by a small man in a bowler hat who is sitting in the large motor-coach in the foreground. The chicken, partly because it is marked with an X, which hypnotises it, and partly because it knows that the least movement it makes means certain death to it, remains resolutely where we put it.

But only for a moment, however. JV r e are on the very point of throwing

Sect ion of a road. Note the unfortunate chicken marked with an “X.” a small stone, marked Y, at it to stir it, when a remarkable thing happens A stout man, without a mark on him anywhere except a large scratch on his knee from a passing mudguard, rushes forward and snatches up this chicken. “Just you leave my birds alone in future!” he says indignantly. And then, before ‘we can explain our motives, he swings round on his heels and hurries away in the opposite direction, glaring at. us from time to time over his shoulder. The last we see of him both he and the chicken

are being knocked down by a speeding brewer’s dray. Needless to say, this completely l-uins the experiment. We must now take some other chicken and place it in a more select district —say, on the pavement just outside the London Pavilion. What happens this time? Why, before we know where we are, .Mr. C. B. Cocliran, the entrepreneur, has buttonholed us. “Whatever are you doing with that Y’oung Ladybird?” he asks. “Oh, just a little scientific research work,” we say. “It crosses the road for no apparent pxxrpose.” Instantly Mr. Cochran is struck with the mystery of the thing. To our utter astonishment, we are offered a good round sum for our chicken—say, a shilling—and promptly take it. That evening it adds ye’t another laurel to this great impresario’s crown with its extraordinary road-crossing pei-form ance. By this time, of course, we have had more than enough of chickens. We don’t feel inclined to waste the best years of our life in testing them to no avail. f Without a single l-egret we dismiss them from our mind for ever, and go quietly home by underground. After all, if they want to cross a modern road quite aimlessly, then let them. Their blood is on their own heads. _ Besides, they can’t expect to live long, anywayl