Rick's b.log - 2020/02/06
It is the 21st of November 2024 You are 18.117.78.87, pleased to meet you!

Why did the chicken cross the road?

I was driving home yesterday when I occasioned upon a chicken. In the road. In the process of crossing the aforementioned road, and not even remotely afeard of my particularly noisy vehicle.

I put on my hazard warning lights and waited for the bird to make its way to the side.

"Why did you cross the road?", I asked. I do not consider this a malapert question in the circumstances.

No reply.

Remembering where I was, "Pourquoi vous a traversé la route?", I asked.

Still no reply.

Getting a mite miffed, "¿Por que cruzar la calle?", I asked.

Yet no reply. I then wondered if it may be that cruzar was a cross as in Jesus, not as in traversing a road, though I had my doubts that such matters would have been too formidable a barrier to understanding my question. You just crossed the road, you feathered fiend. Tell me why!

Or perhaps, goodness, this chicken spoke Breton?
I have no idea in that case as Google Translate supports Chichewa which sounds like some sort of chewy fried dough confection (it's a Bantu language → Malawi etc), but it doesn't support Breton.

I regarded the flightless fowl sternly. The answer that has been bugging humanity ever since roads were devised lay within that peregrinate poultry, but it did not deign to inform me of its motives. Indeed, the answers to the fundamental questions may be right there within the tiny brain of that shabby collection of feathers...yet its beak remained firmly closed. Nary a cluck nor a squawk was emitted.

It simply looked at me and then at the road, before ambling off somewhither in that nonchalant way that only chickens can, no doubt looking for the last hints of apricity before nightfall.

Your comments:

David Pilling, 7th February 2020, 16:19

to reach the Gallus gallus  (we didn't do Latin at sed. mod.)