GC12FKP Mike the Headless Chicken (Traditional Cache) in California, United States created by SD Rowdies

GC12FKP ▼

A cache by SD Rowdies Message this owner

Hidden : 4/27/2007

Difficulty:

Terrain:

Size: Size: small (small)

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Geocache Description:

Park at Horsethief Canyon staging area and then walk down the paved road southward to find the trail toward Quail Oasis. Gentle down slope to the end. Round-trip to existing caches is about 6.45 miles. Wooded sections now and then for shade. Snakes along the trail during warm months.

It was September of 1945 just after World War II had been won. The depression was over. Finally, there was to be a chicken in every pot. But Mike had other ideas. Mike was a Wyandotte rooster. A Fruita, Colorado farmer named Lloyd Olsen cut off Mike's head. After running about like, well, like a chicken with his head cut off Mike actually refused to die. There was just enough brain stem left at the top of the neck to keep him going. Mike lived for 18 months. Lloyd kept him alive by feeding him grain, one piece at a time. He drank from an eye-dropper; the chicken that is. Olsen got the story into Life Magazine, called him Miracle Mike, dispatched him on a tour of the U.S.A. and Europe, and charged people a quarter to take a look. Finally, Mike choked to death on a kernel of corn far from home in an Arizona motel room. No one knows where Mike is buried, but that hasn’t stopped Fruita, Colorado from celebrating their famous fowl. There’s a huge festival in Fruita each year to honor Mike the Headless Chicken. Mike’s story and the festival was once broadcast on the CBS Sunday Morning show. There’s an official Mike the Headless Chicken website at the link below. Check it out for further details. http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/ Steve of the Dillon Gang once attended the festival and while there purchased a replica of Mike to serve as a Geocache container. Steve kindly passed the container on to Harmon of SD Rowdies due to Harmon’s unflagging interest in headless chicken stories. As Harmon puts it, "Hail, Ah been eatin' headless chickens all my life." Harmon researched the subject for years and found evidence of six documented cases of chickens that survived after having their head chopped off. Four accounts were found in a 1934 compendium of “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” articles. Harmon once saw a 1951 television-news spot showing a woman on trial in Arkansas for harboring a headless chicken that she fed while on the witness stand by dropping grain down the chicken’s stumpy throat. If you can’t attend the Fruita Festival then do the next-best thing, come search for and find Mike’s very own Geocache along the Quail Oasis Trail. You'll be a better person for doing so.