Chickenology Encyclopedia

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Why did the chicken cross the road?
Why do chickens cross roads?
The most comprehensive listing on the Web (or so it should be).

C

C3PO (Star Wars):

• I am fluent in over six million ways of crossing the road.
• Sir, may I remind you that I am fluent in 6,000,000 forms of communication and this chicken has not... shutting up, sir.
• Sir, according to my calculations, the odds of a chicken successfully navigating a road are 3,750 to 1 against.
• Oh, splendid! We are now a part of the flock!
• I wish I would be a bit more ... completed before the crossing.

Julius Caesar:

• It came, it saw, it crossed.
• To come, to see, to conquer.
• To get away from the back stabbing in the coup.

John Cage:

• If you don't know, why ask?

James Cagney:

• He crossed twice. The dirty double-crosser.

Captain Caldwell:

• He was a Blue Hen's Chicken and raring for a fight.

Mike Callahan:

• Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased; shared chicken is soup.

Lando Calrissian (Star Wars):

• Why you slimy, no good, double-crossing chicken!! You got a lot of guts crossing that road, after what you pulled!
• Well, well... What have we here? A chicken? Mmmm you truly belong here on my plate!

John Calvin:

• So God can reveal his goodness, glory, wisdom, power and justice.

Joseph Campbell:

• In primitive cultures, we can find many such examples of the chicken motif that cannot be dismissed as mere coincidence. For instance, I am reminded of an old Navajo legend in which a buffalo crosses a stream to "come" to the other side -- an obvious negative language devised to prepare tribesmen for a transcendental experience. Similarly, the Hindus believe in Savanaya, or a sacred cow that leaps over a chasm on Thursdays. Through metaphorical interpretation, we are led to realize that all examples suggest an attainable higher state of consciousness like that of Nietzsche's ubermench, or superman, as outlined in his novel "Thus Spoke Zarathustra."

Albert Camus:

• Seeing that an indifferent world lied on all sides of the road, the chicken knew it would be absurd not too cross, and for that moment, the chicken knew what it was to really be alive. It was if the bird had been asleep its entirely up until this choice was put before him. So, with a newfound determination and a smile, the chicken valiantly crossed the road only to be put out of its mercy by an eighteen wheeler.
• The chicken's mother had just died. But this did not really upset him. as any number of witnesses can attest. In fact, he crossed just because the sun got in his eyes.
• It doesn't matter; the chicken's actions have no meaning except to him.

Candide:

• To cultivate its garden.

Eddie Cantor:

• To make whoppie

Harry Carey:

• Holy Cow! It might be. It could be. It's gone!

Shlomo Carlebach:

• Yannani nini nini; yannani nini nini; yannani nini, yannani nini, yi nini nini; yini yannani yannani, yi ninininini, yanani yanani yi ni ni ni ni ni, yanani, yanani yininininini.....

Carrion Eater (Babylon 5):

• "That chicken killed in the middle of the road? Tastes just like Narn."

Johnny Carson:

• Johnny Carson: Let me tell you, it was so cold at that farm...
  Ed McMahon: How cold was it?
  Johnny Carson: It was so cold, that the chickens were mugging the sheep to get wool for sweaters!

Jimmy Carter:

• America did not invent road-crossing chickens. In a very real sense ... road-crossing chickens invented America.
• It has looked on a lot of chickens with lust.
• It had lust in its heart.

Bill the Cat:

• Oop Ack.
• Ack. Thpppbt

The Cat:

• Curiosity killed the chicken.

Willa Cather:

• Those blank roads, without the stream of cars pouring through them, were like empty jails. It struck young chicken that this was the trouble with wide roads; they asphalted you in.
• But as the years passed, all alike, the chicken began to get a little restless.
• What Rosicky really hoped for his chicks was that they could get through the road without ever knowing much about the cruelty of eighteen wheelers.  "Their mother and me ain't prepared them for that."

Suzy Cato (New Zealand children's show host.):

• Road. R-O-A-D. Avenue, path, street, track, motorway. Brrm Brrm. Road. See the chicken. See chicken run.

Bennett Cerf:

• The lions on that side were more friendly; he crossed to get to the other pride.

Miguel de Cervantes:

• T'is the part of a wise chicken to cross the road today for tomorrow and not venture all his eggs in one basket.

Commander Chakotay (Star Trek Voyager):

• I'm not sure but I can find out. That chicken is my animal spirit guide.
• Whatever its reason, whatever its goals, we should respect its right to cross the road and seek its own spiritual awareness.

Charlie Chan:

• Hasty conclusion easy to make, like hole in water.
• Truth, like oil, will in time rise to surface.

Raymond Chandler:

• Across these mean streets a chicken must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete chicken and a common chicken and yet an unusual chicken. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a chicken of honor - by instinct, by inevitability, withouth thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best chicken in his world and a good enough chicken for any world.
• She had beady inhuman eyes like strange black jewels and the kind of feathers a bird of paradise might envy. I knew that if they made her a free-range chicken she'd grab the first opportunity and never look back.

Nurse Chapel (Star Trek):

• Oh, Spock, I fixed you your favorite Vulcan plomeek and chicken soup!

Charlie X (Star Trek):

• Because it didn't want to STAY....STAY....STAY....STAY....STAY...

Henry Charrierre - see: Papillon

Geoffry Chaucher:

• In Southwerk at the Tabard as the chyken lay, redy to wenden on its pilgrimage to Canterbury with ful devout corage.
• So priketh hem nature in hir corages.

Cheech (or Chong):

• Just to be there, man.

Tung Chee-Hwa:

• The chicken still has the right to cross the road, but she should not do it in a way which will cause embarrassment to Beijing.

Chekov (Star Trek):

• It must have been on its way to assist in saving my life for the billionth time..did I scream this time?
• It was a Russian chicken of course!
• Of course, road crossing was inwented by Russian chickens.

Chewie (Star Wars):

• Gwrrroooooaaaarrrrrrlllllll!

The Chicken:

• I am crossing the road to block traffic as a protest against ..." (thump).
• Bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk!

Chick-Fil-A:

• Because after intensive market analysis, Chic-Fil-A concluded that the franchise would benefit from better traffic patterns on the other side of the intersection.

Renee Chignall (New Zealand):

• Of course I made the chicken do it, but the chicken wanted to be forced.

Julia Child:

• Obviously the chicken tried to cross the road to get away from the likes of meself and my impeccably sharp cleaver!!! Take that, bird!! Wack!

Chinese saying:

• Whether the chicken's crossing is fast or slow, the road is always the same.
• Practice makes the crossing perfect.

Noam Chomsky:

• To manufacture consent.
• The chicken didn't exactly cross the road. As of 1994, something like 99.8% of all US chickens reaching maturity that year, had spent 82% of their lives in confinement. The living conditions in most chicken coops break every international law ever written, and some, particularly the ones for chickens bound for slaughter, border on inhumane. My point is, they had no chance to cross the road (unless you count the ride to the supermarket).
  
  Even if one or two have crossed roads for whatever reason, most never get a chance. Of course, this is not what we are told. Instead, we see chickens happily dancing around on Sesame Street and Foster Farms commercials where chickens are not only crossing roads, but driving trucks (incidentally, Foster Farms is owned by the same people who own the Foster Freeze chain, a subsidiary of the dairy industry).
  
  Anyway, ... (Chomsky continues for 32 pages. For the full text of his answer, contact (Odonian Press)

Jean Chretien:

• OK, for me, de chicken, 'e crossed de road because 'is team was der, and because 'e 'ad de plan.

Sir Winston Churchill

• To brace itself to its duty, and so bear itself that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was the chikens' finest hour.”
• Never have so few crossed so that so many could stay.
• Out of blood sweat and tears.

Technical Writer David H. Citron:

• To escape from Boston Chicken? Who knows? Meanwhile, read my technical writer's chicken soup recipe.

Tom Clancy:

• The Mark 84 gargleblaster that the chicken carried, at the heart of which was an inferior ex-Soviet excimer laser system, had insufficient range to allow the chicken to carry out its mission from this side of the road.

Dick Clark:

• Umm. He's got a good beat. I'll give him a 95.

WWNN's Adam Clatsoff:

• If you had been hatched where the chicken was hatched, and had been raised where the chicken was raised, and eaten the same chicken feed that the chicken had eaten, you probably would have crossed the road, too.

Beaver Cleaver:

• I dunno Wally. Wh-Why would a chicken cross the road?

John Cleese:

• Manuel from Barcelona: "Que?"
  Basil: "You know, a chicken crossing the road...."
  Manuel: "Que?"
  Basil: [looking it up in a dictionary], "Un Pollo..."
  Manuel: interrupting, "No, No we out of chicken.."
  * WHAP!!*
• Because it was very silly.
• This isn't a chicken license, you know! It's a dog license with the word "Dog" crossed out and "Chicken" written in in crayon.
• This Chicken is no more. It has ceased to function. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. It's a stiff. If it wasn't nailed to the road it'd be pushing up daisies. It's snuffed it. It's metabolic processes are now history. It's bleeding demised. It's rung down the curtain, shuffled off the mortal coil and joined the bleeding Choir Invisible. This is an Ex-Chicken.

Hillary Rodham Clinton:

• I don't bake cookies; I don't cook chicken. I am not a crook -- er, cook.
• I know we had Jewish friends at Yale but this is getting ridiculous!
• That's MY chicken.
• I don't recall a chicken crossing a road because chicken-road-crossings were handled by Jr. Associates at the Rose Law Firm.

President William Jefferson Clinton:

• Because the mean-spirited Republican majority in congress would throw it out in the street. I feel its pain.
• The chicken was persuaded to cross the road by the Democratic congress. It is now returning to the middle of the road.
• What?
• Did some one say Chicken McNuggets?
• Chaverim, I'd like to share with you a dvar torah on this important sh'eylah.
• She flew across and I don't consider that crossing the road.
• I'd like to share with you an important thought on this important question.
• Nowhere in the Bible does it say that crossing the road constitutes adultery.
• What chicken? I don't recall a chicken.
• "Because that's what the public said I should do..."
• I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What do you mean by chicken? Could you define chicken please?

Coca-Cola:

• Because crossing is the real thing.

Johnny Cochran:

• The chicken didn't cross the road. It was planted there by the police as part of a conspiracy to frame the species!
• There is no proof that the poultry (hereinafter "Chicken") did, indeed, cross the byway (hereinafter "Road"); this is all hearsay evidence and, as we all know, hearsay evidence is incontrovertibly inadmissible in any court of law in this jurisdiction. Beyond this, it is speculative at best whether or not Chicken, walking on his or her alleged feet, could cross the road, dependent, of course, upon the relative size of the pure asphalt used in the particular Road's construction. We therefore submit our motion to have a portion of the asphalt of the Road in question brought to the court whereupon the feet of Chicken would then be compared to the asphalt. We would then prove unequivocally that Chicken's feet could, in no way, be accountable for crossing the Road for the simple but undeniable reason that had Chicken crossed the Road, Chicken's toes would have disappeared into the crevices between the jumble of asphalt conglomerate which makes up the Road, causing Chicken to become irreparably entangled and thereby causing detrimental and deleterious -- and possibly fatal -- damage to Chicken by any motorcycle, car, truck, bus, lorry, eighteen wheeler, or any other vehicular mode of transportation legally able to traverse the Road in question (dependent entirely upon the weight of the vehicle and the stress-bearing load capabilities of the asphalt and the substrata beneath it). See, Little Red Riding Hood, LLC v. Wolf, Big Bad & Co., Inc., (N.D. Cal. 1935), denied on appeal. It is obvious that this frivolous case should be dismissed on merit.

Joe Cocker:

• The road was so beautiful to the chicken!

George M. Cohan:

• Just to ride a pony.

Christopher Columbus:

• The chicken wanted to go to India by going west.
• To prove the world was round.

Hong Kong Tourist Commission:

• The chicken was tested. The chicken was not infected. The chicken was attempting to evade the deadly human flu which has been spreading throughout the poultry population of southern Guangdong Province. There is no cause for alarm.

Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (Conservative Judaism's legal panel):

• Some of us view the chicken which crossed the road as having a reason which we can ascertain with direct certainty, while others view the chicken's decison as a metaphor for all of life's decisions. In any case, the halakha is that the chicken must cross the road. Orthodox chickens feel that they must take exactly 6 minutes to cross the road, or they forfeit their trip, but we in the Conservative movement believe that a trip may also be halakhically acceptable if the trip takes 2, 3, 5, or 6 minutes. In times of great need, the chicken may drive across the road. [This ruling not applicable in Israel per ruling of the Va'ad Halakha of the Masorti movement]. [Footnote: Female chickens may wear a tallit, but are not required to do so.]

Computer Chickes:

Assembler Chicken: First it builds the road ...

COBOL Chicken:

0001-CHICKEN-CROSSING.
IF NO-MORE-VEHICLES THEN
PERFORM 0010-CROSS-THE-ROAD
VARYING STEPS FROM 1 BY 1 UNTIL
ON-THE-OTHER-SIDE
ELSE
GO TO 0001-CHICKEN-CROSSING

C Chicken: It crosses the road without looking both ways.

C++ Chicken: The chicken doesn't have to cross the road, you simply refer to him on the other side.

Cray Chicken: Crosses faster than any other chicken, but if you don't dip it in liquid nitrogen first, it arrives on the other side fully cooked.

Delphi Chicken: The chicken is dragged across the road and dropped on the other side.

G3 300 mH Chicken: It crosses twice as fast as any Pentium chicken

Gopher Chicken: Jumps out onto the road, turns right, and just keeps on running.
Tried to run, but got flattened by the Web chicken.

Intel Pentium Chicken: The chicken crossed 4.9999978 times.

Iomega Chicken: The chicken should have backed up before crossing.

Java Chicken: If your road needs to be crossed by a chicken, the server will download one to the other side. (Of course, those are chicklets.)

Lotus Chicken: Don't you *dare* try to cross the road the same way we do!

Mac Chicken: No reasonable chicken owner would want a chicken to cross the road, so there's no way to tell it to. [Editor's Note: Actually, you wait for the operating system to send you an AppleEvent instructing you to place the chicken on the other side of the road.]

Microsoft Chicken (TM): It's already on both sides of the road. And it just bought the road.

Newton Chicken: Can't cluck, can't fly, and can't lay eggs, but you can carry it across the road in your pocket !

NT Chicken: Will cross the road in June. No, August. September for sure. But no later than 2001.

OOP Chicken: It doesn't need to cross the road, it just sends a message.

OS/2 Chicken: It crossed the road in style years ago, but it was so quiet that nobody noticed.

OS/ 8.1 HFS+ Chicken: It had much more free space to cross.

Quantum Logic Chicken: The chicken is distributed probabilistically on all sides of the road until you observe it on the side of your course.

VB Chicken: USHighways!<TheRoad.cross>(aChicken)

Web Chicken: Jumps out onto the road, turns right, and just keeps on running.

Win 95 Chicken: You see different colored feathers while it crosses, but cook it and it still tastes like ... chicken.

Win 98:  Because the road crashed at the public demonstration.
It should have expected to cause a crash while crossing.

Andrew Comstock:

• It is shocking for a chicken to cross showing its breast without dressing. He who stops to observe the chicken will be damned to spend eternity in Hell.

Confucius:

• Chicken who first look both way, lives to see another day.
• When the emperor performs the rites with full reverence, and the court officers behave as true scholars and gentlemen, a hen may cross any road in the kingdom safely.

Joseph Conrad:

• Mistah Chicken, he dead.

John Constantine:

• Because it'd made a bollocks of things over on this side of the road and figured it'd better get out right quick.

Rich Cook:

• Crossing the road today is a race between civil engineers striving to build bigger and better super-highways, and the chicken trying to prove them bigger and better idiots. So far, the chicken is winning.

Alastair Cooke:

• Good Evening, and welcome to Masterpiece Theatre. Tonight, we present the epic British drama "How The Chicken Went," based on the 1843 novel by Herbert T. Poultry, and adapted for the screen by Joanna Drumstick. Starring Susan Hampshire as the Chicken, and Anthony Hopkins as the evil and unrepentant diner, Borstrom, this elegant period piece explores the mores and morality of a society in which ordinary chickens had to face their destiny of crossing the road to meet their fate at the hands of the monied upper classes, regardless of their own ambitions or desires...

Lord Cooke of Thorndon (New Zealand):

• The question here is one of motivation, for which the test now is whether the chicken's action was reasonable.

Sandra Cooney (New Zealand):

• This chicken was forced accoss this road by the government's blatant disregard for anything other than the bottom line.

David Copperfield:

• To be the hero of its own life.

Sheila Copps (Deputy Prime Minister of Canada):

• BECAUSE I SCREAMED AT IT REAL LOUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
• Okay, I know that the chicken promised it would cross the road if the Liberals failed to eliminate the GST, but it was a stupid promise to make and the chicken deeply regrets ever making it. However, the chicken will not be crossing the road because to do so would cost tax payers $500,000.
• (a few days later): Alright! Alright! The chicken will cross the road like it promised. But it'll be right back again. Now leave me alone.

Pam Corkery (Radio talkback host and new MP New Zealand):

• Why did the CHICKEN cross the ROAD. That's just the sort of stupid pig ignorant patronising question I've come to expect a dork like you to ask.

Vito Corleone:

• We made her an offer she couldn't refuse.

Howard Cosell:

• It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an Herculean achievement formerly relegated to Homo Sapiens pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurrence.

Jacques Ives Cousteau:

• Zee cheecken, unaware of zee dangare beehind heem, crosses zee street. Weezout warning, zee Porsche strikes, and zee balance of zee nature ees maintained.

Stephen R. Covey:

• When the chicken and the road can work together for the win-win, the result is synergy!

Cowboy from Texas:

• "Y'all cross thataways."

Ichabod Crane:

• I couldn't tell. He was running around without his head.

Jean Cretien, Prime Minister of Canada:

• "It wasn't a chicken, you know, it was an Inuit carving of a loon. But the RCMP should have been there anyway..."
• Wear the fox hat.

Crewman (in red suit - Star Trek First Contact):

• "Captain, this chicken seems to have crossed the AAARRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!"

Quentin Crisp:

• The difficulty with chickens is that they are not returnable.

Walter Cronkite:

• That's the way it is.

Aleister Crowley:

• Because it was its True Will to do so.

Dr. Crusher (Star Trek):

• Maybe since he couldn't make the other side to get to him, -he- had to get to the other side....
• If there's nothing wrong with the chicken, there must be something wrong with the universe.

Wesley Crusher (Star Trek):

• I'm not sure, but I can figure it out if I reroute these systems and reconfigure the warp field and run a level 3 diagnostic on the whootchacallit and...

e. e. cummings:

•         chicken
  legs moving
      road
  car
  missed
          safety

Marie Curie:

• She was radiating with enthusiasm as she crossed the road.

Czech saying:

• Not even a chicken crosses for nothing.

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