From: L' Ermit (lhermit@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Mar 01 2002 - 14:44:59 MST
[url=http://www.angelfire.com/zine/icecreamgirl/mike00april.html]Mike the
Headless Chicken[/url]
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.
<This was reprinted from
[url]http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/headless_chicken/mike.html[/url]>
Which has been redirected to
[url]http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/headless_chicken/index.html[/url]
There are photographs of this "phenomenon". It makes the point about the
capacity of the chicken brainstem quite sweetly...
_________________________________________________________________
Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Sep 25 2002 - 13:28:44 MDT