Posted by On 10 September 1945 in Fruita, Colorado, farmer Lloyd Olsen beheaded a young rooster named Mike, who survived because the axe had spared most of his brain stem and the jugular vein. Fed with an eyedropper, Mike toured the United States as an attraction for 18 months, until he choked to death in Phoenix in March 1947. Fruita still holds a festival for him every May.
You know how, when you cut off a chicken’s head, it starts to run madly for a few minutes after being beheaded?
The same thing happened to Mike the chicken, but he kept going for a year and a half!
Listen to his incredible story.
Mike the headless chicken
It’s 1945 and the couple Lloyd and Clara Olsen are working on their farm in Fruita, Colorado.
They raise chickens to sell at the market: Lloyd cuts their heads off and his wife cleans them. Then they put everything into their wagon and go to town to sell them.
On September 10, 1945, with her mother due for dinner, Clara sends Lloyd out to the yard to fetch a chicken. He picks Mike, a five-and-a-half-month-old Wyandotte rooster. But something strange happens:
after its head is cut off, the chicken does not die, but keeps walking and trying to peck at food on the ground.
Lloyd put it in a fruit crate at night and you can imagine his surprise when the next morning he got up and saw the headless chicken alive and well.
He decided to take it with him to the market and bet with friends a beer or some spare change that he has a headless chicken, alive.
The news spread quickly and the manager of a traveling circus visited Lloyd. He proposed to exhibit Mike the chicken around the United States and the farmer, given the poverty in which he lived, decided to accept the offer.
Mike thus began touring the US and became famous.
Lloyd also brought him to the University of Utah, where it was confirmed that he really was alive without a head, and there Mike was subjected to various tests.
Many articles were written about Mike, also called Mike the miracle, and some appeared in famous magazines such as “Time” and “Life”. The public paid 25 cents to see him and, at the height of his fame, Mike earned Lloyd 4,500 dollars a month.
Mike’s death
Mike was fed with an eyedropper that let drops of water and milk fall directly into his oesophagus, along with small bits of corn and worms now and then. A syringe was used instead to free him from the mucus that would form in his throat.
One night in March 1947, while the Olsens were staying at a motel in Phoenix, Arizona, on their way back from a tour, Mike started choking on his mucus.
The day before, the Olsens had left the syringes at the sideshow, and they could do nothing to save him.
Mike died in his owner’s arms, suffocated.
But how is it that a chicken can survive without a head?
First you have to consider that many of the functions of a chicken can be carried out by the brain stem, and not from the top of the brain.
Lloyd’s axe took off most of the head, but left Mike one ear and most of his brain stem, which controls breathing, heart rate and many reflexes.
Another thing that allowed the chicken to survive was that the axe missed the jugular vein, and a blood clot stopped Mike from bleeding to death. On top of that, birds have a second balance organ in the pelvis that controls walking almost independently of the head: this is why a headless chicken can still stand and walk.
One can therefore say that it was a totally unforeseeable and extraordinary case.
Lloyd did not become rich thanks to Mike, but managed to improve his life a little, buying a pick up and a tractor to replace his horse and his mule.
The Olsens went on working as farmers.
In Fruita, the town where the Olsen farm was, you can see a statue of Mike the headless chicken.
Since 1999, every year on the third weekend of May, the town has also held a festival in his honour, Mike the Headless Chicken Day. Mike still holds the Guinness World Record for the longest-surviving headless chicken.
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