Why did the chicken cross the road?

Here at the Institute for Nitty-Gritty we raised our scholarly sights recently to delve into that age old conundrum, “Why does a chicken cross the road?”

From a variety of sources we found answers from celebrities, some of them dead and rightfully so. Simply precede each quote with the question.

• Ernest Hemingway: To die in the rain, alone, lying next to a leopard.

• Pat Buchanan: To steal the job of a decent, hard working American.

• George W. Bush: We don’t like chickens. What’s important is whether or not they’re on our side of the road. There’s no middle ground here.”

• Colin Powell: To the left of the screen you can clearly see the satellite image of a chicken crossing a road and a farmer giving chase with a hatchet.

• Hans Blix: We have reason to believe a chicken is there, but we haven’t yet been allowed access to the other side of the road.

• John Kerry: Although I voted to allow the chicken access to the other side of the road, I’m now against it.

• John Kennedy: Ask not why the chicken crossed the road. Ask what kind of mess he left behind.

• Admiral Yamamoto: I fear we have awakened a sleeping chicken.

• Ralph Nader: The chicken couldn’t reach the unspoiled habitat on the other side of the road, because it was crushed under the wheels of a gas guzzling SUV thanks to the greed of American industry.

• Rush Limbaugh: I’ll bet that chicken got a fat government grant to cross the road, and someone out there has already formed a support group. And you know who’s paying for that? You are. Yep, your tax dollars, folks, yanked out of your pockets to build roads for chickens to cross.

• Martha Stewart: No one told me which way the chicken was going.

• Dr. Seuss: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why he crossed it I wasn’t told.

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

• Grandpa: Back in my day we didn’t ask why chickens crossed roads. If they wanted to cross roads, we said have at it. What’s all the fuss about?

• Barbara Walters: In a few moments we’ll be listening to a chicken tell for the first time the heart-warming story of how it barely survived a serious case of molting but went on to accomplish a life long dream of crossing a road.

• Frank Sinatra: Do be do be do.

• John Lennon: Imagine all chickens in the world crossing roads together in yellow submarines.

• Aristotle: It is the nature of chickens to cross roads.

• Karl Marx: The other side of the road held an historic inevitability.

• Captain Kirk: To boldly go where no chicken had gone before.

• Mr. Spock: Beam me up, Scotty. There’s no intelligent chicken down here.

• Sigmund Freud: The fact that you are concerned about a chicken crossing a road reveals your underlying sexual insecurities.

• Bill Gates: I have just witnessed a preview of the new Microsoft Office-Home-Bathroom-XP.5 for Knuckleheads, which not only allows a chicken to cross roads but will lay eggs, increase your manure pile, and check your oil and water.

• Albert Einstein: Did the chicken really cross the road, or was he already on the other side?

• Bill Clinton: I did NOT cross the road with that chicken. What is your definition of road?

• Al Gore: I invented the chicken.

• John Wayne: Move ’em out, pilgrim. We gotta get across that road before another rooster shows up.

Bob Huber is a retired journalist living in Portales. He can be contacted at 356-3674.