Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?

There's a dead chicken in my yard. I saw it as I drove up this evening. Our neighbor keeps chickens pinned up in his back yard but anyone who has ever owned chickens knows, that keeping chickens in a fence is easier said than done. After all, they have wings. They don't fly south for the winter, but if they can work up enough speed and drag to lift off, they can often get over a fence.
This poor bird made the unfortunate decision to fly into my yard. Perhaps he thought my big ol' dogs were statues or maybe real thick shrubs. But his thinking was flawed which is the case with most chicken thought....with the possible exception of Foghorn Leghorn (the cartoon rooster).
At any rate, I fetched a shovel and buried the poor creature.
I had chickens myself several years ago and I kept their wings clipped.....just enough to keep them earth bound. I love fresh eggs and ten or twelve hens throw off some eggs. We were sharing eggs with our friends and selling a few dozen a week to help offset the price of feed but one summer they started disappearing. I though perhaps I had been remiss in my wing clipping chores but when I checked, they were all clipped.
Not only were chickens disappearing but egg production dropped dramatically.
I was perplexed. One night the neighbor next door called me about 9 p.m. to say that he could hear my chickens. They are always long retired by 9. In fact, there is an old saying "he goes to bed with the chickens." Now when I re-read this last line it sounds a little kinky, but what this old saying really means is that chickens go to roost shortly after the sun sets. So I when my neighbor called I knew something was up. I grabbed my flashlight and shotgun and hustled off to the barn. When I turned the light on in the barn, there was a possum chowing down on the eggs and he had his eye on one of my Dominecker hens. He was surprised by the light, but before he could make his retreat, I sent him to possum heaven with a belly full of eggs.
I'm a live and let live kind of guy, but as a farmer, you can't allow an animal to come into your chicken house and eat your chickens....especially an ugly animal. Possums look like big ol' rats and they aren't playing with a full deck either. In fact, the only thing more stupid than a chicken is a possum.
Do you know why the chicken crossed the road? to show a possum that it could be done.
This is a southern joke because you can't drive a hundred yards in the south without seeing a dead possum.
OK, I admit that this was a strange entry tonight, but I write them as they come....just so happens this one involved chickens and possums.