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The chicken that lived for 18 months without a head
BBC ^ | 9/10/15 | BBC

Posted on 09/09/2025 5:43:21 PM PDT by 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.

(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Pets/Animals
KEYWORDS: birdbrain; mikepence
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To: Texas Eagle

😃😃😅😂🤣🤣🤣😜😛


21 posted on 09/09/2025 6:23:03 PM PDT by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the Days of Lot; They did Eat, They Drank, They Bought, They Sold ......)
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To: desertsolitaire

That’s the one I’m thinking about.


22 posted on 09/09/2025 6:28:11 PM PDT by Macho MAGA Man
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To: DallasBiff

Was the chicken names Delaware Joe?


23 posted on 09/09/2025 6:29:08 PM PDT by MIchaelTArchangel
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To: DallasBiff

The reporter is ignorant. A chicken is not an animal.


24 posted on 09/09/2025 6:36:47 PM PDT by Dacula
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To: DallasBiff

Which democrat politician is it?


25 posted on 09/09/2025 6:41:09 PM PDT by faithhopecharity ("Politicians aren't born, they're excreted." Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 to 43 BCE))
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To: Dacula

Of course it is. It’s a member of the kingdom ‘animalia’.

From Wiki:

“any of a kingdom (Animalia) of living things including many-celled organisms and often many of the single-celled ones (such as protozoans) that typically differ from plants in having cells without cellulose walls, in lacking chlorophyll and the capacity for photosynthesis, in requiring more complex food materials (such as proteins), in being organized to a greater degree of complexity, and in having the capacity for spontaneous movement and rapid motor responses to stimulation.’

You may be thinking of ‘mammal’, which has a different mening.


26 posted on 09/09/2025 6:51:56 PM PDT by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: Dacula

Sure it is. Not a mammal, but an animal.


27 posted on 09/09/2025 7:02:25 PM PDT by gundog (The ends justify the mean tweets. )
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To: DallasBiff

You know the government’s going to take credit for it.


28 posted on 09/09/2025 7:19:20 PM PDT by TBP (Decent people cannot fathom the amoral cruelty of the Democrat cult.)
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To: TBP

If so, it’s taken them about 80 years to do it...


29 posted on 09/09/2025 8:32:19 PM PDT by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: Larry Lucido

I think it ran for President.


30 posted on 09/09/2025 9:08:13 PM PDT by GingisK
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To: DallasBiff

Fruita, Colorado, close to the Utah border, is the home of Mike the Headless Chicken. There is an annual festival in his name. A tiny sliver of Mike’s brain was left behind and that’s what kept him going, along with water and soft food from an eyedropper.


31 posted on 09/09/2025 9:56:44 PM PDT by SaxxonWoods (Annnd....TRUMP IS RIGHT AGAIN.)
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To: DallasBiff

Well we just had a president who “presided” 4 years without a brain...so that beats the headless chicken!


32 posted on 09/09/2025 10:01:15 PM PDT by mdmathis6 (A horrible historic indictment: Biden Democrats plunging the world into war to hide their crimes!)
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To: MtnClimber

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

I like that idea!


33 posted on 09/09/2025 10:24:29 PM PDT by rellic (No such thing as a moderate Moslem or Democrat )
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To: gundog; Dacula
Sure it is. Not a mammal, but an animal.

Maybe a "manimal?"

Regards,

34 posted on 09/10/2025 3:01:56 AM PDT by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: DallasBiff

Colorado is overrun with DemocRATS so this really isn’t that strange.


35 posted on 09/10/2025 4:32:15 AM PDT by FlingWingFlyer (Is this damn country so hard up for Judges that we have to hire Sparkle Sookananan from Trinidad?)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

“ However, just think of how many times that chicken voted for Democrats.”

A mail in ballot had to be used.
Getting to the voting location would have been difficult


36 posted on 09/10/2025 4:49:35 AM PDT by HereInTheHeartland (“I don't really care, Margaret.””)
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To: DallasBiff

This reminds me of something that happened in my early life.

A family tradition was that anyone who had a birthday got to choose the birthday dinner fare. My mother’s sister showed up in advance of her birthday with a live guinea hen in the trunk of her car.

We knew she was bringing it, but never guessed that it would be alive.

My mom had no idea what to do with it, but she knew a local farmer. The farmer knew exactly what to do, so while I watched, he chopped its head off on a tree stump. The carcass ran around for a while making squawking noises, and within a minute or so, it dropped dead.

I can’t imagine what would have happened if it refused to die!


37 posted on 09/10/2025 4:52:32 AM PDT by Fresh Wind (Kamala defines herself in just 4 words..."Nothing comes to mind.")
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To: DallasBiff

Must have been a Democrat chicken - Dems have proven they don’t need brains to exist....


38 posted on 09/10/2025 5:01:22 AM PDT by trebb (So many fools - so little time...)
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To: Dacula

Animal
Vegetable
Mineral

Pick one.....................


39 posted on 09/10/2025 5:38:08 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
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To: DallasBiff

I read of this in Ripley’s Believe it or not decades ago.


40 posted on 09/10/2025 7:02:19 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar ( REOPEN THE MENTAL HOSPITALS CLOSED IN THE 1970S!)
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