Mike the Chicken Lived for 18 Months Without a Head

Like any person "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" a headless chicken does, indeed, run around crazily and without much thought—at first. But if that chicken is Miracle Mike, a chicken that actually spent 18 months without a head, the phrase takes on a new meaning. To be a chicken with its head cut off, if that chicken is Mike the headless chicken, is to embark on a national tour and to be profiled in Time magazine. It is to spend your days drinking a milk-water mix dropped down your exposed throat from an eyedropper. And it is to die, when that eyedropper is accidentially left behind, a relatively calm death, in a motel room.
 But let's begin with Mike's decapitation.