BE OUR GUEST: HOW DID THE CHICKENS SURVIVE EVOLUTION?

It was the other day that I let my chickens out of their yard and what a ball they had following my tiller and snatching up the earthworms. But tilling, as everybody knows, is no kid's stuff, and so I took a break to catch my breath. No sooner had I stopped the machine than they surrounded me -- all six of them -- as if they wanted to say, what's the matter, Master? Loafing, huh! Don't you know earthworms are angel's food for us? Observing them, I wondered what little heads they had (as if I had not seen chicken heads before) and how many brain cells they might contain. I wondered how they survived the tremendous upheavals, the violent outbursts of volcanoes, the breaking and shaking of the crust of the earth in the young millennia of our planet, when dinosaurs and legions of other species on earth disappeared. And it can't be denied that a hen can't outfox a fox, outrun a coyote nor out fly a hawk, yet they live and thrive all over the globe, making a mockery of Darwin's doctrine that only the fittest survive. And there is the old ongoing dispute of which came first, the egg or the hen. The evolutionists declare that everything came into being by itself in the soupy, primitive ocean at the beginning of time in which there were live-creating, chemical ingredients, a place an egg could very well have assembled. Not so, the creationists cry, God created heaven and earth and everything in it in six days six thousands years ago. Hold your breath, the evolutionists yell, the earth is older than 6,000 years.

Who is right?

The German philosopher, Emanuel Kant, no friend of the clergy, proclaimed: "The order and expedience in the universe is too compelling as to presume its existence as a mere accident." That would imply a divine designer was at work at creation time 15 billion years ago. But Kant did not prescribe the other side's argument either. He certainly did not believe that the Creator Spirit crammed his creational work of billions of galaxies in a short six day span, and to be sure, the creationist-fundamentalists mean six regular weekdays. By the way, the seven-day week was a Babylonian invention. The returning Hebrew exiles brought the idea with them to Jerusalem in the last quarter of the sixth century. Ezra worked it into the Torah (the Mosaic law) in the fifth century B.C. It can hardly be assumed that the Divine Maker of all things made a whale in the twinkling of an eye which plowed a minute later the seven seas of the world. How then were heaven and earth and everything in it made? That we shall never know. How and when will remain a mystery for all eternity. We'll never know which came first, the egg or the hen.

A fluttering startled me out of my contemplation. A hen stood on the tiller blinking at me as if to say: Wake up, gold brick, day dreamer, we want some more worms. The sun is casting long shadows, don't you see? I started the tiller and, to be sure, the hens searched diligently for their angel's food. Finally they blinked at the sun, left the field, went through the gate and up the steps into their chicken house for a good night's sleep. Looking after them, I thought, how did they survive since they came into being? Could it have been that they approached one day a homo erectus, who sat in front of his cave entrance, looking at him fearlessly as they looked at me? Did the old cave dweller hear a cackling of a hen in the nearby bush and did he find a nest full of eggs? Did a grin flush over the face of the cave man, our forbear, and was then and there sealed a covenant between man and chicken folk, containing the reciprocal clause: You chickens give me your eggs and at the end I will devour you for granting you protection from all your enemies, from now on and forevermore for you and your chicken's chicken? That was certainly the case.

That's why the chickens live and thrive all over the earth, and their impact on our economy is profound. One has only to think of "Kentucky Fried Chicken."

Then and there I decided to get those hens of mine a rooster. He won't cause them to lay two eggs a day but would certainly make them happy. Let him crow and wake up some neighbors early in the morning -- I hear dogs barking often all night through.

When will the hen folk perish from the earth? As long as man will live, the chickens will live. When the last human shall die on earth, the last hen will die with him.

Herbert Hirschfeld is a Cape Girardeau resident and occasional contributor to the Opinion page.