Author Topic: You Won't believe this!  (Read 1020 times)

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Offline lindacarl

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You Won't believe this!
« on: April 01, 2006, 03:00:54 AM »
taken from Land of Lights
http://www.landoflights.net/detay.asp?hid=389

The inspiring story was about ‘Mike the chicken'. I imagine, one can read an inscription on his tombstone (if is there any) something similar to: "Born on September 10, 1945, as a Wyandotte chicken belonging to Lloyd Olsen of Fruita, Colorado, USA, had its head chopped off, but went on to survive for 18 months. Mike's owner, Lloyd Olsen fed and watered the headless chicken directly into his gullet using an eyedropper, and Mike eventually choked to death one night in an Arizona motel."
It is well known that chickens can 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 rulebook 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. Then, Lloyd decided that if Mike had that much will to live, he would figure out a way to feed and water him to see how long he could keep the bird alive.
Mike's story spread all over the country in no time. Sceptical scientists thought it was a hoax, so one week into Mike-the-headless-chicken's physically-altered life, farmer Lloyd Olsen packed Mike up and took him on a cross-country tour from hometown to the University Of Utah in Salt Lake City. The axe blade, scientists discovered, had missed the five-and-a-half month old Wyandotte rooster's jugular vein, and a clot had saved the chicken from bleeding to death.
Celebrity status was guaranteed, when a manager came along and convinced Lloyd that Mike would be a big draw in the sideshow circuit. Miracle Mike, as he soon came to be known, toured up and down the West Coast of the United States. Just six weeks after his beheading, Mike was featured in the articles of highly respected Life and Time magazines. His fame grew. At the height of his popularity, Mike was raking in a cool $4,500 per month, which were no small potatoes in those days.
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).
Like many legendary celebrities, Mike's life ended in a hotel room. Mike began to choke and Lloyd was unable to find the eyedropper to clear Mike's oesophagus. It was the end of the road for Mighty Mike.
The exact date of Mike's belated departure from this world was never recorded. Years later, it was estimated, based on Lloyd's information, that Miracle Mike died in March of 1947. Eighteen months living without a head could be considered a world's record and took its place in the Guinness Book of Records. Yet, Lloyd didn't want to admit that he had accidentally killed the bird, so he claimed that he had sold the bird off. This little white lie is the reason that many of the stories printed about Mike, claimed that he was still touring the country as late as 1949.
Gone but certainly not forgotten, Miracle Mike's life is still celebrated annually as the "Mike the Headless Chicken Day" by Fruita residents, who simply remember him as, "a big, fat chicken who didn't know he didn't have a head". Needless to say, Chicken Dance Contest, Chicken Recipe Contest, More Chicken, the 5k "Run Like a Headless Chicken", Chicken Games, Eating Contests, Mike's Market and more are the events of a great Family Fun!
Useless? Useful? I'll leave that for you to decide.





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