The SearchVoat Forum

The story goes back to September 10, 1945, in Fruita, Colorado, USA, when a farmer named Lloyd Olsen tried to cut down a five and half months old cockerel named Mike for their supper. As he axed off the chicken’s head, he was surprised to see Mike get up and walk around erect. The headless chicken was able to balance itself on a perch and walked clumsily, trying to preen and crow as well, although it was less impressive. Olsen realized later that his axe missed the vital jugular vein that drains blood from the head, brain, face and neck, transmitting it to the heart, and left most of the brain stem and one ear intact. A blood clot in the vital nerve prevented Mike from bleeding to death.

As Mike did not die, Olsen decided to take care of it and started feeding it a mixture of milk and water with the help of an eyedropper, also feeding small grains of corn sometimes. Since then, Mike became a public figure with the slideshow of its headless pictures and a live celebrity, and earned fame worldwide, also featuring in Life and Time magazines. Initially people thought this story of headless chicken to be a hoax, but later, the owner of Mike took it to the University of Utah and established the facts. Mike, the chicken went on to live for 18 months without a head and earned up to US$4,500 per month during the height of its popularity.

As Mike did not die, Olsen decided to take care of it and started feeding it a mixture of milk and water with the help of an eyedropper, also feeding small grains of corn sometimes. Since then Mike became a public figure with the slideshow of its headless pictures and a live celebrity, and earned fame worldwide, also featuring in Life and Time magazines. Initially people thought this story of headless chicken to be a hoax, but later, the owner of Mike took it to the University of Utah and established the facts. Mike, the chicken went on to live for 18 months without head, and earned up to US$4,500 per month during the height of its popularity.

However, in March 1947, miracle Mike began to choke during midnight, and unable to find the feeding eyedropper, it finally succumbed to death at a motel in Arizona desert during one of its many public appearances as a headless celebrity chicken. Mike, the Headless Chicken has now become an institution in Fruita, Colorado, and starting from year 1999, the institution celebrates the third weekend of May as an annual “Mike the Headless Chicken Day”.

Hoax or Fact:
Fact.

Here, LIFE.com presents Mike’s unlikely story, as well as the utterly unsettling pictures by Bob Landry that ran (and some that never ran) in LIFE. Brace yourself. . . .

shewhomustbeobeyed wrote: ↑Tue Nov 22, 2022 3:43 pm Eww. FFS!