The chicken that lived for 18 months without a head

BBC ^ | 9/10/15 | BBC

[DallasBiff]

Seventy years ago, a farmer beheaded a chicken in Colorado, and it refused to die. Mike, as the bird became known, survived for 18 months and became famous. But how did he live without a head for so long, asks Chris Stokel-Walker.

On 10 September 1945 Lloyd Olsen and his wife Clara were killing chickens, on their farm in Fruita, Colorado. Olsen would decapitate the birds, his wife would clean them up. But one of the 40 or 50 animals that went under Olsen's hatchet that day didn't behave like the rest.

"They got down to the end and had one who was still alive, up and walking around," says the couple's great-grandson, Troy Waters, himself a farmer in Fruita. The chicken kicked and ran, and didn't stop.

It was placed in an old apple box on the farm's screened porch for the night, and when Lloyd Olsen woke the following morning, he stepped outside to see what had happened. "The damn thing was still alive," says Waters.

[DallasBiff]

I know an article from 10 years ago, but I know now where, the term "bird brain" comes from.

[frank ballenger]

Edgar Allen Poe didn’t live to see it to be inspired.

[Larry Lucido]

The chicken might still be alive, practicing law someplace.

[Texas Eagle]

Thbbbbbp! We had a President with no brain for four years.

[frank ballenger]

It’s alive. 🐓 🐔

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VkrUG3OrPc

[Ronaldus Magnus III]

Thbbbbbp! We had a President with no brain for four years.

I would have preferred, and the country would have been better off, with a headless chicken.

[SaveFerris]

I was gonna say....

[Texas Eagle]

Amen to that, bro.

[Texas Eagle]

Yeah, I think we were all thinking it.

[Beowulf9]

I’m just glad they didn’t elect her.

[Jamestown1630]

Chickens are interesting critters.

Now do ‘parthenogenesis’, aka ‘virgin birth’.

[HartleyMBaldwin]

I remember seeing this in a “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” book when I was a kid.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Nah, don’t be silly. However, just think of how many times that chicken voted for Democrats.

[PROCON]

[desertsolitaire]

This the one where the Farmer chopped it too high up and left the brain and stem on it and it lived with nutrition dropper fed down it’s esophagus? That one?

[MtnClimber]

I bet democRATs could live without a head. Anyone want to do an experiment?

[Jamestown1630]

I think that’s the story I heard.

[No name given]

So am I.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Named Joe Biden?

[escapefromboston]

I was just talking about this chicken , weird that you posted this.