Everyone has heard it said that a chicken can walk around for a few seconds after its head is cut off, until the reflexes of the nervous system stop and physical death occurs. But this is nothing compared to the story of Mike, who lived without his head for a year and a half and became world famous.

 

On 10 September 1945, Lloyd Olsen, an American farmer, was planning to get his five-and-a-half-month-old rooster ready for dinner. With a sharp axe he cut off the rooster's head, but the rooster didn't seem to mind at all because it continued to run around looking for food.
By sheer coincidence, the blow severed only half of the brain stem and one ear, leaving the rest intact and allowing the cock to control its body and survive.
Without a beak, the cock had to be fed with an eyedropper.

The rooster lived another eighteen months and ended up weighing a healthy 4 kilograms instead of the previous one kilo. Thus was born the legend of the headless rooster, which was entered in the Guinness Book of Records and paraded all over America.

At the end of a performance, Mike the Headless Rooster passed away, leaving behind the memory and respect for his will to live.