[spam][crazy][wrong] inventing mean words

[Undiscussed Horrific Abuse, One Victim of Many]

on we go to chicken jokes!

why did the chicken cross the road?

_really_, _why_ did the chicken cross the road?

Long ago there were birds without human roads. There were other kinds
of roads, animal paths, rivers, etc. But no paved roads with big
rectangular wheeled boxes on them.

At that time, chickens meandered about their environment driven by the
pushes and pulls of their survival needs. A chicken might go one place
to forage some tasty worms, or go another to avoid a dangerous
predator.  Chickens likely have many social motivators, but I don't
understand them well.

Why _did_ the chicken cross the road?

Are we frustrated, that we ask this? Wishing our chicken had not flown
the coop? Maybe we simply are used to having very domesticated
chickens, and don't expect any road-crossing to develop. Roads don't
look like chicken coops! Why would you go across?

I'm guessing I often imagine the "why did the chicken cross the road"
question as arising out of the experiences of a frustrated farmer, or
frustration within a farming community. Your chicken wandered over to
my property and laid some eggs. I don't know!

Part of me wonders if there could have been some big event that
followed the road-crossing of a chicken, such that this experience was
chiseled into our cultural history so deeply. Jokes are big! Yankee
doodle called his feather macaroni, and the civil armies of the usa
slaughtered each other.

In these digital times, we don't gossip much about chickens, but in
rural farming communities the behaviors of chickens can be huge
topics. Something new that happens, however small, is something new to
talk about.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

It doesn't make sense. There was no reason to cross the road.

One reason a chicken would cross a road for certain would be if a
single farmer died. The chickens might be left untended and need a way
to escape. This seems quite tragic. Maybe so tragic that we wouldn't
want to discuss it, thinking of chickens pecking each other, leaving
themselves bloody to find a way out of a coop. And who was caring for
the farmer's baby?

When things are painful, people find other ways of saying them. Maybe
the chicken just crossed the road to get to the other side.

I don't really think the farmer died. I don't think we have enough
information to make any guesses as specific as that.