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Mike the headless chicken
He was fed by a syringe, performed in concerts and even named a festival after him. 80 years ago, “Mike Miracle” was a real celebrity, and he didn’t lay golden eggs, but he made his owners good money for almost 2 years.
Em 1945, Lloyd Olsen and his wife, Clara, were killing chickens on their farm, then selling them. There were around 40 or 50, but, as his great-grandson says, Troy Watersà , “they came to the end and there was one who was still alive, standing and walking”… even after having his head cut off.
The owners decided to leave the animal in a box overnight, and when they woke up the chicken was still there.
From that moment on, Lloyd Olsen, as his great-grandson narrates, when he went to sell chickens to the city of Fruita, in the USA, “he took this rooster with him. He threw him into the cart, took the chicken with him and started betting beer or something like that with people, saying there was a headless chicken alive.” The story of the headless rooster became popular, and they started calling him “Miracle Mike”.
It was then proposed to Mike’s owner that started taking the chicken to showsa kind of tour. As he was experiencing financial difficulties, Olsen accepted. People were so fascinated with Mike that the tour it quickly spread to the entire US territory.
MIke’s travels were carefully documented by Clara in a scrapbook that is still in the family’s gun safe. The chicken “is part of our strange family history”, says the great-grandson.
The owners they fed him with a dropper and cleared its throat with a syringe, as the chicken tended to accumulate mucus. It was only due to the forgetfulness of his owners, who left the syringe at a concert, that Mike ended up choking to death on mucus, 18 months after his head was cut off.
“For years, he said he sold the chicken to a guy on the show circuit,” Waters says. “Only a few years before he died he admitted to me one night that the chicken had died. I guess I never wanted to admit that I messed up and let the proverbial die goose that lays the golden eggs.”
But how did he live so long?
Decapitation disconnects the brain from the rest of the body, but for a short time the circuits in the spinal cord still have residual oxygen, he explains to the BBC Tom Smuldersresearcher specializing in chickens. But, by residual period, we understand some 15 minutes — not 18 months.
But for a human being, losing their head would imply an almost total loss of their brain. For a chicken, it’s a little different. “I would be amazed at the small amount of brain that exists in the front of a chicken’s head“, Smulders guarantees.
in fact most of the brain is concentrated in the back of the skull, behind the eyes. “The majority of the avian brain, as we currently know it, would be considered the tronco cerebral at the time,” explains Smulders.
Still, says the expert, it is still surprising that the chicken did not bleed to death. A blood clot would have prevented him from dying that way.
In any case, there is currently, in May, the “Headless Chicken Festival”, or the “Headless Chicken Festival”by the Olsens’ great-grandson in honor of Mike, who even has a statue in his honor.
Many tried to replicate the extraordinary feat, and there was even a neighbor who showed up every weekend at Lloyd’s house to try. persuade him to teach you the trick in exchange for cases of beer. Whatever the case, by luck or chance, the world continues to remember Mike, the (almost) headless chicken.
