Legend has it raccoons were brought to the Island as a front for hunters to, as they say, “jack” deer at night. As the story goes, if a warden caught someone hunting at night, the hunter would claim he was after raccoons rather than trying to stock up on some after-hours venison.

In the long run this ploy did not work out so well for the rest of us. Raccoons tear apart our garbage at night and, more devastatingly, they go after our chickens with reckless abandon.

What came first — the chicken or the egg? It’s one of those questions that has plagued the human race for ages, but Up-Island Eggs owner Katherine Long settled the debate on Friday afternoon as she was giving her chickens a treat of corn.

“The thing that laid an egg wasn’t a chicken, the thing that hatched out of the egg was the chicken,” Ms. Long said. “Whatever laid the egg first was something else. The egg came first.”