The Headless Chicken

Fruita, Colorado celebrates a very strange holiday on May 11 - "Mike the Headless Chicken Day".  It pays homage to Mike, a 1940's rooster, who lived a surprisingly normal chicken life for 4 1/2 years... AFTER GETTING HIS HEAD CHOPPED OFF!

The basic story is that a farmer, L.A. Olsen, was planning on making fried chicken for his mother-in-law, and her favorite part was the neck.  So when he went to slaughter the chicken, he tried to leave enough of the neck as possible.  After he chopped off the head, the chicken got up and started resuming normal chicken behavior with the other animals, even though its head was totally missing!  Olsen figured it might be an interesting curiosity, and after the chicken was still alive and well after a week, he took it into the local university to have scientists study Mike.

It turns out that Mike had enough of a brain stem left to carry on his normal instinctive functions.  Olsen still had to feed him by hand (by dropping food down its esophagus), but Mike gained quite a bit of fame and lived for another 4 1/2 years, and eventually died from choking on a corn kernel.

For a more complete story, visit http://www.h2net.net/p/nslade/mike.html

~Chicken Farming~ 

A life-long city man, tired of the rat race, decided that he was
going to give up the city life, move to the country, and become a chicken farmer.
He found a nice, used chicken farm, which he bought. It turns out that his next-door
neighbor was also a chicken farmer. The neighbor came for a visit one day and said,
"Chicken farming isn't easy. Tell you what. To help you get started, I'll give you 100
chickens." The new chicken farmer was thrilled. Two weeks later, the new neighbor
stopped by to see how things were going. The new farmer said, "Not too good.
All 100 chickens died." The neighbor said, "Oh, I can't believe that. I've never had
any trouble with my chickens. I'll give you 100 more." Another two weeks went by,
and the neighbor stopped in again. The new farmer said, "You're not going to
believe this, but the second 100 chickens died too." Astounded, the neighbor asked,
"What did you do to them? What went wrong?" "Well," said the new farmer,
"I'm not sure. But I think I'm not planting them far enough apart