FemmeFlash - Mike the Headless Chicken

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Mike the Headless Chicken

The e-mail message seemed innocent enough. A reader simply asked "Ever heard of the story posted here at this link?" and offered a hyperlink to another web page. I clicked and came across a story that I was sure had to be pure fiction. The only problem is that the story appears to be totally true.

This is the story about Mike the chicken. Mike, of course, was not your ordinary chicken. No, not ordinary at all. You see, Mike was a headless chicken. If you want to be really specific, Mike was actually a headless Wyandotte rooster.

I should point out that Mike wasn't always a headless bird. In fact, he was born 100% normal, complete with a head (most normal chickens have one of these) in Fruita, Colorado.

On September 10, 1945, Mike's short five-and-a-half month life was about to take a turn for the worse. On this day, Mike received a death sentence. His owner, Clara Olsen, decided that it would be nice to have chicken for dinner.

Watch out Mike!

As you can probably imagine, Mrs. Olsen sent her husband Lloyd out to chop Mike's head off and prepare him for the meal.

Bash! Down came the ax and off went Mike's head.

Mike's head was surely dead. Mike's body was not.

Now I know what you are thinking - it is well known that chickens will run around frantically when their heads are chopped off. That's probably where that old expression comes from. And, everyone knows that a headless chicken just can't survive more than a few moments.

Apparently, Mike forgot to read the rule book for playing the game of Life. His head may have been lying on the floor, but he had no problem standing up and strutting around as if nothing had actually happened. Day after day he continued to gain weight. Mike could easily balance himself on the highest perches without falling. His crowing consisted of a gurgling sound made in his throat. Mike even attempted to preen his feathers with his nonexistent head (apparently he never noticed). It seems that Mike could do just about anything that any other chicken could do, if you exclude all of the functions of his head.

As I'm sure you can imagine, headless chickens are not an everyday event. In the tradition of that famous huckster Barnum, there was money to be made in this oddity.

Miracle Mike, as he soon came to be known, toured up and down the West Coast of the United States. For just 25 cents, anyone could pay to get a look at Mike. If you had a spare $10,000 you could have purchased Mike so that you could have him all to yourself. They probably would have thrown in his head as a bonus - it was stored in a canning jar and toured along with Mike.

And, if there was money to be made, there were also copycats. Other people in Mike's hometown began to chop the heads off of their own chickens in an attempt to get in on the scheme. One copycat headless rooster was named Lucky and he managed to live for eleven days before bashing himself into a stovepipe and dying (Lucky wasn't that lucky after all). Several other headless chickens lived for a couple of days.

So how was Mike able to survive? Scientists examined him and determined that Mr. Olsen had not done a very good job at chopping Mike's head off. Most of the head was actually removed, but one ear remained intact. The slice actually missed the jugular vein and a clot prevented him from bleeding to death. Apparently, most of a chicken's reflex actions are located in the brain stem, which was also largely untouched.

Through his open esophagus, Mike was fed a mixture of milk and water with your typical eyedropper. He was also fed small grains of corn, which ultimately did him in.

Mike was traveling back home to Fruita with his owners. The Olsens heard Mike choking in the middle of the night. This had happened many times before, but on this night they could not find the medicine dropper that was needed to clear his throat. At four-and-a-half years of age (some people disagree on the exact age, but it was without question a long time for a headless chicken), Mike choked to death on a kernel of corn. Miracle Mike was no more.

But wait, the story is not over! Mike actually has his own holiday! On May 17, 1999, Mike's hometown of Fruita held the first "Mike the Headless Chicken Day" in honor of one of its most famous citizens. Some of the events included the 5K Run Like a Headless Chicken Race, egg tosses, pin the head on the chicken, and the classic Chicken Dance. Lunch included - you guessed it - chicken, chicken salad, and the like. Let's not forget the great game of Chicken Bingo in which the numbers were chosen by where chicken droppings fell on a numbered grid.

Hopefully Mike the Headless Chicken Day will be an annual event. I wouldn't miss for the world.