What happened on a Colorado farm on September 10, 1945, sounds like something out of a bizarre dream — but it was all too real. Lloyd Olsen headed outside that late summer day with a simple task: fetch his five-month-old rooster for the dinner table. Nothing unusual about that. When you've got more than one rooster, fights are inevitable, so the extras typically ended up as meals. But what unfolded after Lloyd brought this particular bird to the chopping block was anything but typical.
The rooster's head came clean off — and then the bird stood back up and began strutting around as if nothing had happened. Lloyd figured it was only a matter of time before the animal collapsed, but that moment never came. When it became clear that Mike, as the rooster came to be known, wasn't going to die anytime soon, Olsen made a decision: he'd do whatever it took to keep him going.
Using an eyedropper, Olsen began feeding Mike a mixture of powdered chicken feed, milk, and water, delivering it directly down his exposed throat. He'd also occasionally supplement this diet with worms and small grains of corn.
With his headless rooster still alive and kicking against all logic, Lloyd did what perhaps anyone would do in such an extraordinary situation — he brought Mike down to the local bar to win some bets. It was there that someone took particular notice and talked Lloyd into entering the rooster in a freak show circuit. That turned out to be an incredibly smart decision. Mike brought in roughly $4,500, which translates to just about $55,000 a month in today's currency — arguably making him the most valuable rooster to ever live.
Plenty of skeptics were convinced the whole thing was a hoax, at least until scientists from the University of Utah stepped in to examine Mike the Headless Chicken for themselves. Their findings revealed that Lloyd's ax had somehow missed the jugular vein entirely, and rapid blood clotting had saved Mike from bleeding out. On top of that, they discovered that the bird's brain stem had been left intact, which was sufficient to keep his body functioning.
Against all odds, Mike lived for a remarkable 18 months after his decapitation before ultimately choking to death on a corn kernel.