This week’s prompt has us back in Little Tittweaking

When The Chicken Crossed The Road

In the last one hundred years, as man has built more stuff, the animal-infrastructure interfaces have caused many conflicts, none more so than in Little Tittweaking.

For the majority of the nineteenth century, the occasions when creatures connected with the immovable creations of humans went largely unnoticed, but gradually the crushed, crumpled and flattened mammals began to be a bit pissed off.

The indigenous zebra population was the first to rise up, when yet another of its brethren was flattened by a road roller that was laying yet more tarmac. The equine complaints did little to assuage zebradian concerns, the only consolation being the creation of a public safety crossing in memory of the two dimensional victim. Dissatisfied beyond measure, the zebras joined a musical missionary group and settled on a small part of the Tanzanian savannah where they taught barcoding to the giraffe population as a new form of camouflage.

Next came the spherical red bumbeetles who, during mating form clouds of vibrating frenzied copulating Coleoptera. Historically these clouds have been avoided as, visually they remind the viewer of their last hangover with two distinct and unsatisfactory consequences. First the pavements are awash with secondhand curries and, second, the flower displays planted by Little Tittweaking’s Urban District Council are uprooted as peace offerings to those impacted by their feet being tandooried. Many attempts to disperse the foreplaying flyers have been undertaken, but none were as successful as the growth of motorcars, whose windscreens proved to be a very effective contraception. Devastated the beetles formed tighter and tighter battalions until one day they proved to be too much for the tensile strength of windscreen glazing. Something had to be done, and so negotiations took place to find somewhere safe for the mating season without making driving in Little Tittweaking more of a lottery than it had been since Hans Brake and Cy Lancer attempted to replicate their famed Millennium crop circles by performing some blind hands free donutting on the bypass. Eventually a solution of sorts was reached and, these days, the bumbettles form novelty glitter balls at the frequent raves that take place throughout Little Tittweaking’s annual cultural extravaganza.

After that the confidence of the animal population to take direct action grew. The church bats covered the bells in a specially adhesive guano that effectively rendered them mute. The dairy herds went on strike and when challenged to allow themselves to be milked told the farmers to ‘pull the udder one’. Bulls entered china shops without qualm; horses refused to be schooled on the basis that there were no courses that suited them; sheep baa-red themselves in their briars; and when the town hall was captured by a cohort of pets, who declared themselves in charge, it was clear that Little Tittweaking was now living under the reign of the cats and dogs.

The built environment wasn’t happy. The human population might put up with such an imposition, but the static monoliths saw the writing on the walls, even if it made no sense without an opposable thumb in charge. It rumbled and shook, but largely to no avail.

And then the chicken crossed the road….

In the increasingly febrile atmosphere the road had stayed neutral. It lay both under the radar and the feet and foundations of the warring protagonists. The animals didn’t seem to notice it, as it flattened itself to the ground when any patrols passed. The chickens knew it was there; they pecked at it constantly as a daily source of grit for their gizzards. This relationship was vaguely symbiotic, though both road and chicken was aware of the increasingly mammalian dominance of all things solid.

It only takes one outlier to upset the equilibrium. Buffy Orpington thought herself above the coop. She didn’t want to peck for gravel; she wanted a pile that she could ingest at her leisure. It was her who told the Anti Building League of the insidious presence of the road network, constantly there, under their feet.

The road had been crossed. The delicate balance tipped and the offended paving decided they had to take sides.

It was messy as the the roads rose up, preventing access to all animals. The hot war was short and full of fur and feathers. An armistice was signed; the two sides agreed that for all their stupidity, the status quo ante with man in charge was better since they both then had someone else to blame for all their woes.

And afterwards, as this sad interregnum faded in the collective memory, only one question remained.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Philosophers and scholars have debated this down the years, with many suggestions, but never the real reason.

Because the chicken was a fuckwit.