A headless chicken’s incredible 18-month life

How long can a chicken survive after being beheaded? A few minutes, perhaps. An hour, at best. But 18 months?

That sounds impossible. Yet that is exactly how long Mike, a chicken from Colorado in the United States, survived after losing his head and became known around the world as "Mike the Headless Chicken".

The story began in September 1945, just after the end of World War II, on a farm in Fruita, Colorado.

Lloyd Olsen and his wife, Clara, were preparing 40 to 50 chickens for market. They had done it many times before. Lloyd would decapitate the chickens while Clara plucked their feathers and cleaned the carcasses.

But one chicken refused to follow the usual script.

After Lloyd had chopped off its head, the bird did not collapse and die. Instead, it got back on its feet and began walking around the yard.

At first, the Olsens probably thought it was simply the kind of movement that sometimes occurs after a chicken is decapitated. The nervous system and spinal cord can continue sending signals for a short time, causing the legs and other muscles to move even after the head is gone.

But Mike was different.

Minutes passed. Then hours.

The headless chicken was still alive.

The Olsens were baffled. They decided not to kill the bird and moved it to their porch, placing him in a box.

The next morning, they found Mike still alive and still moving.

That was when the strange incident on the farm began to look like something much more extraordinary.

Instead of becoming another chicken carcass, Mike became a mystery.

THE ROAD TO FAME

The family decided to keep him alive and see just how long he could survive.

Soon, the headless chicken became a regular companion on their trips to the market, where the family went to sell the other chickens.

And it was there that Mike's strange new life began to attract attention.

Lloyd started telling people that he had a living chicken without a head in his wagon. Some were sceptical. Others were simply curious.

But once they saw Mike for themselves, curiosity quickly turned into amazement.

News of the bizarre chicken began spreading around Fruita. Before long, local newspapers picked up the story.

Mike was no longer just a headless chicken on a Colorado farm. It was becoming a sensation.

Within weeks, the story reached Hope Wade, a sideshow promoter from Utah. Wade travelled hundreds of miles to see Mike and quickly recognised his commercial potential.

He told the Olsens that their unusual chicken could make them money if they took him on the road and displayed him to the public.

For the struggling farmers, it was an opportunity too tempting to ignore.

They agreed.

And Mike's journey from a farmyard curiosity to a national celebrity was about to begin.

EXPLAINING THE MARVEL

Before Mike hit the road, the Olsens took him to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, hoping scientists could explain how he was still alive.

They found an answer.

Much of a chicken’s brain is located toward the back of its skull, behind the eyes. When Lloyd chopped off most of Mike’s head including his beak, eyes and one ear a small but crucial part of his brain remained intact.

That remaining portion was enough to keep controlling vital functions such as breathing and digestion.

A blood clot also played a crucial role. It stopped Mike from bleeding to death. It also had a great deal of luck.

However, Mike still needed extra care and attention to keep him alive. Food and water were dripped directly into his oesophagus or food pipe through a dropper, while mucus was cleared from his throat with a syringe.

With that painstaking care, Mike continued to live.

And his fame was about to grow far beyond Colorado.

MIKE GOES NATIONAL

While Mike was in Salt Lake City, Life magazine came to photograph him and write about the extraordinary chicken.

The publicity took Mike's fame to a national level.

The Olsens and Hope Wade then took him on tour, travelling through California, Arizona and the southeastern United States. The tours were occasionally interrupted when the Olsens returned home to their farm.

But even when Mike was home, the attention did not stop.

Letters arrived from people across the country. Some regarded Mike as a miracle. Others questioned the ethics of displaying a headless chicken for money.

For the Olsens, however, Mike had become both a remarkable companion and an unusual source of income.

Then, in 1947, his extraordinary life came to a tragic end.

THE NIGHT MIKE DIED

The Olsens were on tour in Phoenix, Arizona, when they were awakened one night by a disturbing sound.

Mike was choking on mucus.

They immediately reached for the syringe they used to clear his throat.

But there was a problem. They had left the syringe at the sideshow the previous day.

They searched for another way to clear Mike's throat but could not find one in time.

Mike suffocated.

The death was devastating, but it was also embarrassing for the Olsens. Mike had become a valuable attraction, and they did not want people to know that he had died because they had failed to have the equipment needed to keep him alive.

So Lloyd told people that he had sold Mike to another promoter.

The truth remained hidden for decades. Eventually, Lloyd told his great-grandson, Troy Waters, what had really happened.

Waters believes Mike's body was probably taken into the desert and left there, where coyotes may have eaten it.

Probably.

MIKE'S LEGACY

Mike remains the best-known -- and apparently the only -- chicken documented to have survived for such a long period without a head.

Others tried to create their own version of Mike, including one of the Olsens' neighbours. None succeeded.

For the Olsens, Mike's fame also changed their lives. The money they earned from displaying him helped them modernise their farming equipment and buy a new pickup truck.

Eventually, life returned to normal. The Olsens went back to farming, carrying with them memories of the extraordinary 18 months they had spent travelling around the country with a headless chicken.

Clara Olsen carefully preserved those memories. She documented Mike's story through photographs, ticket stubs, letters and other memorabilia, all collected in what became known as the "Mike Scrapbook".

More than eight decades later, Mike has not been forgotten.

Every summer, his hometown of Fruita celebrates his strange place in history with the Mike the Headless Chicken Festival.

There is a 5K race called "Run Like a Headless Chicken", along with contests, games, live music, food, a car show, community activities and, naturally, plenty of headless-chicken costumes and merchandise.

Mike lost his head in 1945.

But somehow, he never lost his place in history.