why did the chicken cross the road?

I did a painting of a chicken. I'm not sure why except I liked it. Our neighbor has chickens - so maybe I'm subconsciously 'keeping up with the Jones'. There is even a Radio 4 programme these days on raising chickens. For some it has become an obsession. People blog on Fowl lessons - lessons learned from the flock I also came across this book whilst surfing: Hen and the art of chicken maintenance I love the title.

But lets stick with the age old question - WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD? Here are my top dozen favorite answers (in descending order)

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.

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!

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.

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

Mrs Thatcher: This chicken's not for turning.

Douglas Adams: Forty-two.

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

Plato: For the greater good.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.......

Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

Donne: It crosseth for thee.