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- A sculpture of Mike - the Fruita, Colorado 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.
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- 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.
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- 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 more information about Mike.
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- The curious most often ask "Was Mike for real?"
He was.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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 (<.link
- 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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