Mike the Valiant Headless Chicken

In all honesty, as you read through the story you have to wonder. Maybe the editors of Life Magazine were bribed. It's hard to offer other explanations as to why they published in 1945 a story, with photos, about what some might call an absolute miracle. Lloyd Olsen, endeavoring to impress his mother in law one September day, was quite careful in his method of beheading a rooster destined for dinner on their farm. (You see, mom-in-law had an appetite for chicken necks.) Somehow as Lloyd's axe fell, it left enough circuitry in Mike's brain stem for him to survive another eighteen months. More than fifty years later, people still flock to the town of Fruita Colorado to join in a symbolic salute to Mike and his brethren. Even if they don't go to his festival, Mike's fans can peruse his site for some (good!) chicken recipes, pictures of past festivals, and inch a little closer to becoming a vegetarian---in spirit, anyway.