Mike, The Headless Chicken

2020-10-12 15:35:40 Written by Zainab Fatima

We live in a world full of strange events. Some people believe in these mysterious events and some do not. Some people try to prove these events through science and some pass without interest. In fact, man is a being of this universe who has always been searching for and trying to understand such things.

Have you ever seen a living body without a head?. This is seen only in science fiction movies which are foolish to believe in reality but it has happened in reality. Yes, there was a chicken in the world without a head. People used to come from far and wide to see this magical chicken.

Mike The Headless Chicken

Mike the Headless Chicken (April 20, 1945 – March 17, 1947), also remembered as Miracle Mike was a Wyandotte chicken that survived for 18 months after his head had been cut off. Although the true story was believed by many to be a joke, the bird's owner brought him to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City to verify the facts.

Day of Miracle

On September 10, 1945, agriculturist Lloyd Olsen of Fruita, Colorado, was scheduled to eat supper with his mother-in-law and was sent out to the yard by his spouse to bring back a chicken. Olsen selected a five-and-a-half-month-old Wyandotte chicken called Mike. The ax removed the bulk of the head, but skipped the jugular vein, leaving one ear and maximum of the brain stem unchanged.

Try

Due to Olsen's weakened try to behead Mike, the chicken was yet able to balance on a seat and walk clumsily. He tried to preen, peck for food, and crow, still with insufficient success; his "crowing" included a gurgling noise made in his throat. When Mike did not die, Olsen instead agreed to care for the bird. He fed it a mix of milk and water via an eyedropper and gave it small grains of corn and worms.

Fame

Once his fame had been created, Mike started a career of touring sideshows in the company of such other creatures as a two-headed infant. He was also photographed for dozens of newspapers and magazines and was featured in Time and Life magazines. Mike was set on the show to the world for an access cost of 25 cents. At the height of his popularity, the chicken's holder received US$4,500 per month ($51,500 today); Mike was rated at $10,000.

Death

In March 1947, at a hotel in Phoenix on a stopover, while traveling back from tour, Mike began choking in the middle of the darkness. He had managed to get a kernel of seed in his throat. The Olsens had inadvertently left their feeding and cleaning syringes at the sideshow the day before, and so he was powerless to save Mike. Olsen stated that he had sold the bird off, concluding in stories of Mike still touring the world as late as 1949. Other sources say that the chicken's cracked trachea could not properly take sufficient air to be eligible to breathe, and it, therefore, choked to end in the motel.