OPINION: Some say the sky was purple, others swear it was flashing orange and red, but all agree it was warm, unseasonably so.
And they were all there in one spot to witness something extraordinary, something that would happen only once: the emergence from the primordial goop of a chicken and an egg.
"From where I was sitting," a Shark Bay stromatolite later told the Discovery channel, "It looked like the chicken was first to the shore."
"No, no, no, no, no," said Gary the mesoproterozoic cyanobacteria. "The egg was first by a mile. I bet my extremely primitive life on it."
History has failed to resolve this earliest of disagreements.
Chicken Fact 27: If a rooster is not present in a flock of hens, the dominant hen will sometimes take the role, stop laying, and begin to crow. This is rare but it does happen.
While the Chicken Dance was catapulted to fame as the accompanying dance to a 1950s oom-pah song by renowned Swiss accordion player Werner Thomas, its alluring choreography was thought to have been devised well before that. Records from as long ago as 2050BC indicate the dance was used in Ancient Egypt to encourage new hens to lay and in time this morphed into an early form of Zumba, an exercise routine popular with the feeble- minded.
Chicken fact 1: The chicken is a bird.
It is widely known that nearly 1000 years ago Persian physician Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi became the first person to isolate the chickenpox virus as unique to the measles virus. What is not known by many is that Dr ibn Zakariya al-Razi for years did not eat eggs for fear he would contract the chickenpox. This unusual prejudice from an otherwise intelligent man of science has been put down to his mother's misguided efforts to stop a young al-Razi from taking their pet chicken and top layer "Garry" to bed.
"I had to tell him something. He was weirding the whole family out and Garry's production was well down," Mrs ibn Zakariya al-Razi said.
Chicken fact 17: In the 1940s an American chook lived for 18 months after its head was cut off. Named Miracle Mike, the plucky but headless rooster had a career in touring sideshows and was photographed for dozens of magazines and papers, including Time and Life magazines.
A spokeschicken for the New Zealand branch of Equal Rights for Fowl recently stated that despite the constant questioning as to motive she was not aware of any of their members crossing the road.
"However, everychook has rights and I don't think anyone would argue that if one of our members decided to cross the road there is every possibility they had good reason to do so. You do not hear the same fuss about ducks or turkeys, so why should chickens be subjected to this ongoing harassment?"
The spokeschicken said there should be more attention paid to the plight of the 100,000 or so unfertililsed fowl eggs that went missing in New Zealand each day.
"And where are they going? That is the real question," it clucked.
Chicken fact 32: It is estimated that more than 50 billion chickens are reared annually for either meat or eggs. Chickens farmed for meat are called broilers, whilst those farmed for eggs are called egg-laying hens.
Chicken has long been the term for a cowardly man but few can agree on when this usage first began. One theory is it began in London in 1798 at one of Sir Humphry Davy's notorious nitrous oxide "experiments". On one occasion, so engrossed in the past-time did he and his fellows become they quite forgot to eat and grew decidedly ravenous. Such was their hunger and the affect of the drug that Davy was mistaken for a well-cooked piece of poultry. Realising he wasn't but also that his fellows would not reach the same conclusion, Davy ran. "Look at the chicken run," said one Samuel Coleridge, who everyone will agree was in a unique position to then embed the phrase into the English language.
On the other hand the origins of egg as an insult are quite Pacific in origin.
"Who is this bloody egg?" an early inhabitant of Aotearoa is reported to have said on first meeting an explorer by the name of Cook.
Chicken fact 4: An egg starts growing into a chick when it reaches a temperature of 30C.
A plucky Hyline Brown, known to many as Mrs Jeremy Brown of central New Plymouth, recently began laying eggs after months of resolutely refusing to produce. Some said the arrival of the cold weather was behind the delay, others said the pressures of urban living had taken their toll and some even asked if journalists had any place owning chickens. Mrs Brown could not be drawn on the reason for her laying lassitude on account of her pea-sized brain and general scatty nature.
Chicken fact 2: A man with his own eggs is wealthier than a man without.
- Taranaki Daily News
And they were all there in one spot to witness something extraordinary, something that would happen only once: the emergence from the primordial goop of a chicken and an egg.
"From where I was sitting," a Shark Bay stromatolite later told the Discovery channel, "It looked like the chicken was first to the shore."
"No, no, no, no, no," said Gary the mesoproterozoic cyanobacteria. "The egg was first by a mile. I bet my extremely primitive life on it."
History has failed to resolve this earliest of disagreements.
Chicken Fact 27: If a rooster is not present in a flock of hens, the dominant hen will sometimes take the role, stop laying, and begin to crow. This is rare but it does happen.
While the Chicken Dance was catapulted to fame as the accompanying dance to a 1950s oom-pah song by renowned Swiss accordion player Werner Thomas, its alluring choreography was thought to have been devised well before that. Records from as long ago as 2050BC indicate the dance was used in Ancient Egypt to encourage new hens to lay and in time this morphed into an early form of Zumba, an exercise routine popular with the feeble- minded.
Chicken fact 1: The chicken is a bird.
It is widely known that nearly 1000 years ago Persian physician Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi became the first person to isolate the chickenpox virus as unique to the measles virus. What is not known by many is that Dr ibn Zakariya al-Razi for years did not eat eggs for fear he would contract the chickenpox. This unusual prejudice from an otherwise intelligent man of science has been put down to his mother's misguided efforts to stop a young al-Razi from taking their pet chicken and top layer "Garry" to bed.
"I had to tell him something. He was weirding the whole family out and Garry's production was well down," Mrs ibn Zakariya al-Razi said.
Chicken fact 17: In the 1940s an American chook lived for 18 months after its head was cut off. Named Miracle Mike, the plucky but headless rooster had a career in touring sideshows and was photographed for dozens of magazines and papers, including Time and Life magazines.
A spokeschicken for the New Zealand branch of Equal Rights for Fowl recently stated that despite the constant questioning as to motive she was not aware of any of their members crossing the road.
"However, everychook has rights and I don't think anyone would argue that if one of our members decided to cross the road there is every possibility they had good reason to do so. You do not hear the same fuss about ducks or turkeys, so why should chickens be subjected to this ongoing harassment?"
The spokeschicken said there should be more attention paid to the plight of the 100,000 or so unfertililsed fowl eggs that went missing in New Zealand each day.
"And where are they going? That is the real question," it clucked.
Chicken fact 32: It is estimated that more than 50 billion chickens are reared annually for either meat or eggs. Chickens farmed for meat are called broilers, whilst those farmed for eggs are called egg-laying hens.
Chicken has long been the term for a cowardly man but few can agree on when this usage first began. One theory is it began in London in 1798 at one of Sir Humphry Davy's notorious nitrous oxide "experiments". On one occasion, so engrossed in the past-time did he and his fellows become they quite forgot to eat and grew decidedly ravenous. Such was their hunger and the affect of the drug that Davy was mistaken for a well-cooked piece of poultry. Realising he wasn't but also that his fellows would not reach the same conclusion, Davy ran. "Look at the chicken run," said one Samuel Coleridge, who everyone will agree was in a unique position to then embed the phrase into the English language.
On the other hand the origins of egg as an insult are quite Pacific in origin.
"Who is this bloody egg?" an early inhabitant of Aotearoa is reported to have said on first meeting an explorer by the name of Cook.
Chicken fact 4: An egg starts growing into a chick when it reaches a temperature of 30C.
A plucky Hyline Brown, known to many as Mrs Jeremy Brown of central New Plymouth, recently began laying eggs after months of resolutely refusing to produce. Some said the arrival of the cold weather was behind the delay, others said the pressures of urban living had taken their toll and some even asked if journalists had any place owning chickens. Mrs Brown could not be drawn on the reason for her laying lassitude on account of her pea-sized brain and general scatty nature.
Chicken fact 2: A man with his own eggs is wealthier than a man without.
- Taranaki Daily News
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