On September 10, 1945, Lloyd Olsen was beheading chickens for market on his family farm in Fruita, Colorado, when one of the decapitated birds picked itself up and started running around the yard, still very much alive. Olsen put the chicken, which he named Mike, in a box on the porch and was amazed to find it still alive the next morning.
Mike survived because most of a chicken’s brain is located in the back of its head, behind the eyes. When Olsen brought down the axe, he lobbed off most of Mike’s head but left the part of the brain that controlled breathing, digestion, and other bodily functions.
Olsen realized he had in Mike an attraction that others would pay to see and spent the next 18 months exhibiting the headless rooster at fairs, carnivals, and other public events. He fed Mike by dripping water and liquid food into his esophagus with a dropper and removed mucous from his throat with a syringe. Mike became so famous that even Time magazine wrote about him.
Mike died on March 17, 1947, while on tour in Phoenix, Arizona. Olsen and his wife, Clara, awoke in their hotel room to the sound of Mike choking on mucous. They searched for the syringe, only to realize that they had accidentally left it at the sideshow where Mike had been on display. Unable to suction the mucous from Mike’s throat, they could only look on as he suffocated.
Though his amazing story ended many decades ago, Mike the Headless Chicken has not been forgotten by the citizens of Fruita. Every year, the city hosts a festival in his honor, which draws hundreds of attendees from around the United States.