Mike the Headless Chicken Festival
- 325 E Aspen Ave., Fruita
Mike probably didn’t have a name until Sept.
11, 1945. Mike’s world changed the day before
when a mistimed hatchet failed to end his
pecking life and send him to the skillet. Most of
his brainstem and one ear, lay on the ground. A
barn cat dined on chicken head, but the Olsens,
Lloyd and Clara, did not.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 1945, Lloyd Olsen
found Mike sleeping in the roost with his neck
under his wing. He started feeding Mike with a
gruel of water and grain through eye dropper.
A week later, Olsen took Mike to the
University of Utah, where researchers found that
Olsen’s ax swing did not cut the jugular, and a
blood clot kept the bird from bleeding to death.
The remnant of brain stem kept Mike’s systems
functioning enough to live. No one reported if
that made Mike elected office material.
For 18 months, Mike, now tagged the
Wonder Chicken, traveled the sideshow circuit
with a manager that was suspected of having a
similar amount of brainstem.
Mike choked to death one night in an Arizona
roadside motel. Make your own joke here.
Today, Mike is in the Guiness Book of World
Records and has a festival in his hometown of
Fruita to celebrate his second life. A 5K race
dubbed the Run like a Headless Chicken race is
held along with a Peeps eating contest, an egg
race, naturall, a car show, artist and crafter booths,
including a shop with left-handed soap. Really.
The festival is in mid-May. For information, see
www.miketheheadlesschicken.org. Fruita is 12
miles west of Grand Junction on Interstate 70.
Other entertainment in the Fruita area includes
whitewater rafting and fat tire bicycling.
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