I'll get right to the best part: In 1945, Colorado farmer Lloyd Olsen was preparing to sell a chicken when he hit a snag. As Sy Montgomery explains in What the Chicken Knows , Olsen "failed to kill the rooster when his ax missed the bird's carotid artery and left one ear and most of the brain stem intact. … He grew from two and a half pounds to eight, and attained national fame as Mike the Headless Chicken on the sideshow circuit from 1945 to 1947." What Mike did on the circuit, presumably, was