Residents of Fruita, a western Colorado town of 11,000, are holding their 12th annual festival this weekend for a chicken named Miracle Mike who,
according to legend, lived 18 months after a farmer lopped off his head with an ax but left his brain stem, a jugular vein and one ear intact. Grisly to some, perhaps. But Miracle Mike’s celebrity has spread abroad, with enthusiasts as far away as Venezuela, Puerto Rico, England and Wales. “This is going to be my third Mike festival, and I’m constantly amazed at the attention it gets nationally and even around the world,” said Ture Nycum, Fruita’s parks and recreation director. It all began when Lloyd Olsen, a farmer in Fruita, was butchering chickens in 1945 and tried to lop Mike’s head off, according to Olsen’s grandson, Troy Waters, who admits he’s a bit mystified by all the fuss. Waters had to coax the story out of his grandfather after finding a scrapbook the Olsens kept about Mike. “I started asking questions of my mom and my mom had come across the scrapbook when she was a kid. They didn’t really like talking about it very much,” Waters said of his grandparents. “But by the time I found it, grandpa was getting up there in years, when older people really like to start talking about things.” “I could never get the same story twice of why he let it live,” Waters said. Word quickly spread about the miracle chicken. The local newspaper ran a story, and soon a promoter from Salt Lake City, Hope Wade, contacted the Olsens. He said they could make money showing Mike at sideshows.
The barnyard mishap made news and national magazines and turned Mike into a sideshow hit in the 1940s. Olsen said he kept “Miracle Mike, the Headless Chicken” alive by giving him ground grain and, using an eye dropper, water, down his esophagus.