Zarbon looked up from the papers he was grading to watch the girl laying on his bed.  Tonya had come into take a nap, but she appeared to have woken up, and was staring at the ceiling with a thoughtful look.

“Penny for your thoughts, luv?” Zarbon asked curiously.

“Which came first,” she replied turning her gaze to him, “The chicken or the egg?”

Zarbon blinked, then frowned as he considered her question.  He shrugged after moment.  “I don’t know.  Why?”

“It’s an old question that people have been pondering for years,” Tonya said, turning her eyes back towards the ceiling.

“Well, you can’t have an egg without a chicken to lay it,” Zarbon said matter-of-factly.  Then he frowned.  “But you can’t have a chicken without an egg to hatch it from.  Now I see what the problem is.  It’s a circle; you can’t have one without the other.”

“If you look at it from that view, yes.  The question is unanswerable,” Tonya added.  She rolled onto her side to look at him, propping herself up with her elbow.  “But I think it could have a fairly simple answer.  It just depends on what your beliefs are and how far out of the box you’re willing to go for the answer.”

“Oh?” he asked curiously.

“Well, consider the Creation theory put forth by those Christians who take the Bible literally.  The chicken came first because God called all the animals into being as they appear now, just like that.”  She snapped her fingers for emphasis.  “So there’s the answer, easy as pie.  It just requires you to believe that’s how it happened.”

“But that’s not outside the box at all?” Zarbon countered.  “It seems very much inside the box, if you ask me.”

Tonya laughed and gave him a smirk.  “True, true,” she admitted.  “Now if you believe the evolution theories, the egg came first.”

Zarbon waited for the explanation, but she just smiled at him.  “I’m listening,” he prompted.

She blinked and the smile faded.  “I thought it was obvious,” she replied quietly.

“Maybe I’m just missing it, but where did the egg come from?” he asked.

Tonya chewed her lip and thought about it for a moment.  “Well, I can only trace it back to fish off the top of my head, but they probably got it from whatever they evolved from.”  Zarbon gave her another blank look and she sighed.  Sitting up, she rolled her eyes and muttered just loud enough for him to hear, “Chemists.”

Taking a deep breath, she began.  “I’m not going all the way back to primordial soup, sludge, or whatever life started in,” she said.  “But following most theories, rather loosely mind you, some fish evolved into amphibians to take advance of life on land.  Some of these amphibians evolved into reptiles to move farther from the water and colonize drier climates.  And birds apparently evolved from reptiles.”  Zarbon nodded slightly.  “Most of the species in those groups lay eggs.  So the egg was around long before the chicken ever was thought of.”

“Interesting,” Zarbon said nodding.  “It makes some sense.  Why are you thinking about it anyway?”

Tonya shrugged and rolled on to her back.  “I was just letting my mind wander and I thought of another old question.  One that has no answer.”  She studied the ceiling again.  “So I thought I’d try something easier.”

“What’s the other question?” Zarbon asked curiously.

“Why is a raven like a writing desk?”