Why did the chicken cross the Vancouver skyline? Turns out it was to promote a line of vegan nuggets being distributed by McCain Foods.

Last week, some Vancouver residents were mystified by the appearance of a chicken flying over the city’s New Westminster Park. Video of the fowl feat was posted to a Vancouver sub-reddit under the headline “[F]lying chickens? Am I taking crazy pills?”

The ensuing thread led to speculation about the nature of the chicken (Was it a drone? Part of a movie shoot?) and a resurrection of the frankly cuckoo conspiracy theory that birds aren’t real but are instead government surveillance devices. Video of the flying chicken also found its way to Instagram and TikTok.

This week it was revealed that the great chicken caper was actually a stunt by Rethink for Simulate Nuggs, which bills itself as a “chicken nugget simulation.” One of its boasts: It “kills you slower” because it’s higher in protein and lower in fat than animal-based nuggets.

“Why create animatronic flying chickens? Because making things that are just like chicken, but better, is exactly what Nuggs does,” said Matt Kohler, managing director, Canada retail at McCain Foods.

Rethink worked with Vancouver’s SFX Studio to create a replica of a chicken, complete with what it describes as upper and lower “flappy things,” a 3.2 megapixel eye and, most importantly, the ability to fly.

That, of course, is a massive upgrade over chicken version 1.0. According to the website KnowYourChickens.com, chickens do possess the ability to fly, but only for limited distances. “You won’t see a group of chickens flying south for the winter,” it states.