X-Message-Number: 13480
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 14:03:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: Headless Living Things
Reading the following news item made me wonder: Have any participants on
CryoNet been decapitated prematurely? This would explain some of the
tendency for repetition, at least.
Sculpture honors Mike the Headless Chicken
By Nancy Lofholm
Denver Post Western Slope Bureau
March 31 - Mike the Headless Chicken is
now the cock of the walk in downtown
Fruita.
A sculpture of Mike - the Fruita chicken that
lived for 18 months in the 1940s minus his head
- is being permanently installed in a flower
planter on a downtown corner today. The
4-foot-high Mike likeness is appropriately made
from 300 pounds of old metal farm castoffs that
include ax heads, sickle blades, hay-rake teeth
and other cutting objects.
The Fruita Chamber of Commerce decided to
enshrine Mike because the rooster, which hopped
off the chopping block and went on the sideshow
circuit instead of into the cooking pot, has
brought the world's notice to this town of 6,000
more than half a century later.
Fruita's reputation for mountain biking and
dinosaurs has paled beside the attention drawn
by a bird without a head. Since his bizarre tale
was publicized last year, when the town held its
first Mike the Headless Chicken Festival, Fruita
chamber officials and historians have been
inundated with thousands of calls, letters and
e-mails, from New Delhi to Auckland, wanting
He was.
Mike belonged to the late Fruita farmer Lloyd
Olsen, who, in an attempt to please his finicky
mother-in-law, lopped off Mike's head at the
base of the skull, leaving as much of the tasty
neck as possible. Following his beheading, Mike
fluffed up his feathers and went about his
normal chicken business.
But he could only go through the motions
of pecking for food, and when he tried
to crow, a gurgle came out. Olsen started
putting feed and water directly into Mike's
gullet with an eyedropper when he was still
alive the next morning. When Mike was still
alive a week later, Olsen took him to
incredulous University of Utah scientists, who
theorized Mike had enough of a brain stem left
to live headless.
Olsen hired Mike a manager, who took him on tour
around the country. Mike was pictured in a Life
magazine spread and listed in the Guiness Book
of Records. He was a popular attraction until he
choked to death on a corn kernel in an Arizona
motel.
Mike's story languished in scrapbooks until last
spring, when chamber of commerce officials were
looking for something more interesting than
pioneers to focus on for Colorado Heritage Week.
The rest is headless history.
Sally Edginton, the chamber's executive
director, said she wasn't prepared for the
frenzy that followed, which hasn't abated over
the last year. Mike has been featured in TV,
radio and newspaper stories around the world.
Denver songwriter Timothy P. Irvin has recorded
a song about him. Mike's story will be featured
in a PBS documentary this spring. His "cyber
coop" Web site (www.miketheheadlesschicken.org)
has had more than 7,000 hits since it was
created in January. Now Mike has been
memorialized in metal by artist Lyle Nichols,
who grew up in Fruita. "I made him proud-looking
and cocky," said Nichols, who noted with a laugh
that he gave the Fruita chamber a discount on
the piece because it didn't have a head.
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