In addition to September being the gate-way month into fall, it is also a fowl month. In case people weren't aware of it - can't speak or opine for others but it never crossed my mind - September is National Chicken Month.
In researching chickens on the web, came across some interesting facts about the bird via www.Smithsonian.com blog. These are the type of facts that makes one shake one's head in amazement while uttering, "go figure" or "I didn't know that!':
- the chicken, gallus domesticus, is a domestic subspecies of the red jungle fowl, a relation of the pheasant family and native to Asia. The grey jungle fowl also contributed to the chicken's evolution
- statistically, there are 25 billion chickens on the planet, give or take a couple of thousand who didn't make it into the stats
- they were first domesticated for cock-fights and not for food
- in spite of the general assumption (at least I assumed it) that chickens can't fly, they can with a great effort, make it over a fence or even into a tree. Hopefully, in the case of the latter, there would be no cats lurking in tree branches waiting to be rescued by firefighters... But I digress.
- they are omnivores and enjoy a meal of seeds and insects but - gasp - they also indulge in an occasional meal of nice and lizards. Remember that during your next chicken dinner.
- in the romance area, a rooster announces that he's found food with a "took-took-took" but hens ignore them if they're aware that food is available. The roosters, in an attempt to impress hens, perform a dance called, 'tid-bitting' where they make sounds and move their heads up-and-down, picking up and dropping food. Researchers have discovered that the females of the species prefer roosters that frequently 'tid-bit' along with larger, brighter combs on their heads. One could deduce from this information that hens are somewhat shallow and will opt for looks rather than personality. But again I digress.
- scientists believe the roosters wattle - the dangly thingy under his beak - aids in attracting a hen's attention while performing his tid-bitting.
So this is all leading to that age-old questions which have been perplexing woman/mankind for millenniums: which came first - the chicken or the egg and just why did the chicken cross the street, anyway.
After great thought, it seems logical (at least in my mind) that the chicken had to originate from the egg, initially. However - it's always the 'howevers' in life that get you in the end - there had to be a hen to lay said egg, thus the formula: hen+rooster in the mood=chicks.
Don't want to speak disparagingly but chickens and their ilk are known to have short attention spans. Perhaps - pure speculation on my part - they cross the road merely because there is a road and they want to perpetuate the illusion that chickens enjoy crossing a road, when in effect, they are petrified of becoming chicken fricassee. Then again, how do we really know whether chickens want to cross the road, anyway? Perhaps it's one of those urban legends that have been passed down from person-to-person and chicken-to chicken. When you think about it (too much time on my hands) there is no logical reason for a chicken to cross the road. It`s a fowl day when these issues don`t receive some attention
Eggs-actly.
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