Dear Ask Boz,

Which came first, the chicken, or the egg?

T.S., Connecticut

Dear T.S.,

The answer is, obviously, both. As told in Reverend Ask Boz’s book Before the 1st Day: The Rise and Fall of Earl, the assignment for the creating the Earth was originally given to Earl. Earl was kind of lazy, and not that bright, for a super-powerful being. He created the earth as a concave plane. Upon it, he simultaneously placed his only two creations: a chicken and an egg.

Needless to say, the chicken had enormous problems. Not the least of which was that Earl decided to make the Earth rock back and forth. The egg gleefully rolled around, doing half-pipe tricks like the egg-roll, sit-and-spin and the weeble. All the while the poor chicken stumbled like a drunk, constantly falling. It tried to emulate the egg, but its wings got in the way of rolling. The sad fowl ended up trying to stay at the low point of the curve, so it wouldn’t bruise its beak anymore, resigned to reading depressing poetry that didn't yet exist.

Eventually, after the excitement of jumping the chicken wore off, the egg took pity. Communicating in the eerie language of eggs and chickens, the egg told the chicken it could ride inside. The chicken wept, and thanked the egg, and got in. Sadly, the chicken had terrible motion sickness, and was constantly vomiting as the egg performed its many stunts.

Everything changed, however, when God came along. Seeing how lazy Earl was, God stepped in, blew into a little tube he found in the back of the earth, and made it convex. (Seen here in an artists rendering.) As you can well guess, the two friends' rolls were totally reversed on this new planet. The egg cried yoke tears as it fried in the sun, and the chicken began to find it unbearably hot inside. The chicken knew something had to change.

Just as the chicken came out, God appeared. All three stood around in an awkward silence for a little bit, and God, having nothing better to do, as it was now the eighth day, laid a doom on them. He said they could live forever together in the Garden of Purdue, as long as the egg did not jump up into the chicken’s oviduct. If it did, God cursed them to be irresistibly yummy to humans and other predators. Of course, that is exactly what the egg did. Most theologians credit Satan, cleverly disguised a Colonel Sanders, for tricking the egg into doing this, but aren’t really mad at him, because most theologians like a nice omelet and their mother’s lemon chicken.

Yours truly,

Ask Boz