The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 73 - Mike The Chicken

Episode Date: April 8, 2015

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds discuss the history of chickens - and one chicken in particular: Mike.SOURCESTOUR DATESREDBUBBLE MERCHPATREON

When you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? You could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. That in-law sweet guest house where your parents stay only part-time Airbnb it and make some money the rest of the year whether you could use a little extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. Hello! You are listening to The Dullab. This is an American History podcast that

we do usually twice a week. Mm-hmm. Each week I read a story to from American history to my friend. Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what the topic is about. Sometimes he's tired. Today he's tired. God, you want to look who to do? I'll do one bottle. People say this is funny. Not Gary Gareth. Stay okay. Someone or something is tickling people. Is it for fun? And this is not going to come to Tickly Podcast. Okay. You are queen fakie of made-up town. All hail Queen Shit of Liesville. A bunch of religious virgins go to mingle. And do what? Pray. Hi, Gary. No. I say done, my friend. No. No. And there might be some hammering going on while we do this, too. Yeah, there's some construction happening. We didn't know this. We don't have a lot of time today because I'm getting on a plane tonight. So there might be some construction in the middle in which case you just got a deal. Or you turn it off and you go, that's sucked. Yeah. We could just pretend it's like a sound effect. The chicken! Jesus Christ. Has inspired contributions to art, culture, cuisine, science, and religion. The chicken. Just chickens. Just chickens in general. Right. Okay. Chickens were and still are a sacred animal in some cultures. The hen was a worldwide symbol of fertility. Eggs were hung in Egyptian temples to ensure a bountiful river flood. Eggs. Yeah. No, that makes sense. It's just thinking ahead. We got to start doing that in California. Get these eggs up.

Get the eggs up, people. Need more bountiful rivers. Need rain. You just start hanging eggs around your house. Your neighbors are like, I don't know what's, it worked in Egypt, bro. I am the egg man. The rooster was a universal sign of virility. For the Romans, the chicken was a fortune teller. Can you imagine being in a time where someone's like, excuse me, chicken. What? Should I take this woman's hand, or should I go off on my own? Talk to me! Well, I just had an interesting talk with the chicken. Chickens accompanied Roman armies, and their behavior was carefully observed before battle. Chick. Leviticus! What's the chicken doing? Sir, it's walking around and eating. Victory! Oh, good. We got a good feeling. Victory. A good appetite meant victory was likely. According to the writings of Cicero, when one contingent of birds refused to eat before a sea battle in 249 BC, an angry console threw them overboard. History records that he was then defeated. Jesus. Yeah. So don't fuck with the chicken. It sounds like a prick. The rooster plays a small but crucial role in the Gospels in helping that's the Bible. I don't know where you're at with that stuff. I'm knee deep in the Bible. In helping to fulfill the prophecy that Peter would deny Jesus, quote, before the cock crows.

In the ninth century, Pope Nicholas I decreed that a figure of a rooster should be placed atop every church as a reminder of the incident, which is why many churches still have cock-shaped weather veins today. Yeah. So it's time to get rid of those. Yeah. So it turns out those are religious. That's a shame. Yeah. Chickens were first domesticated not for eating but for cock fighting. Oh, okay. Until the advent of large-scale industrial production in the 20th century, the economic and nutritional combination of chickens was not much. People didn't really eat chickens that much. And just one day we were like, God, goddamn chickens. Getting hungry watching those two cocks fight. The male of the species can be a fierce animal, especially when bred and trained for fighting. Nature armed the rooster with a bony leg spur. Humans have supplemented that feature with an arsenal of metal spurs and small knives strapped to the bird's leg. Wait, what? Yeah, they strap metal things onto the bird. And so they have like a natural on the back of their leg. They have like a little bone spur thing when they can attack other roosters with. But in cock fighting, they'll put on like blades. What? Oh, yeah, it's like they come armed. They'll fucking blade up a rooster's feet.

Cock fighting is no, it's no joke, man. I mean, I know it's no joke, but I didn't realize we were like turning them into like vampire hunters. Well, it's a fucking warrior pit. Listen, I mean. Shit is real in there. Did you think it was like a boxing match? No, it's to the death, bro. It's not, it's not super insane. It's not like a crazy battle. If you can easily take two hands and pull out one of the opponents, just very simply. That's a fair point. I'm fucking king of the world. Get out of here, asshole. Wait. Oh, shit. Can I have some seed? Cock fighting is illegal in the United States. Louisiana was the last state to ban it in 2008. Wow.

Yeah, they're cool. Jesus. Staying up with the times and I'm sure they're still pissed about it. And I'm sure they're still doing it. Yeah, it has claims to be the world's oldest continual sport. So the oldest. Second discus. Right. And javelin. Artistic depictions of rooster combatants are scattered throughout the ancient world, such as in the first century AD mosaic adorning a house in Pompeii. Some pictures of chickens fighting. The ancient Greek city of Pergamum established a cock fighting amphitheater.

Oh, my God. To teach valor to future generations of soldier. Are you ready to watch something weird? Are you ready to flutter? Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? No. Get some rabbits. Let's have a gladiator fight a chicken. We're not fighting each other. Get more birds.

In 2004, when an international team of geneticists produced a complete map of the chicken genome, right? So they figured out how all the chicken started. The chicken was the first domesticated animal. The genome map provided an excellent opportunity to study how millennia of domestication can alter a species. It started with the red jungle fowl from Southeast Asia, which bred with three other species, which eventually led to the domesticated bird in America. We see today. Are they domesticated? Yeah, they're domesticated. Just because they're easy to cage? Domesticated doesn't just mean like they're kicking it in your house.

I don't think it necessarily means that you sit, but isn't there, I mean, is it just that you simply can, they won't leave? They just won't roll. Yeah, they're your deal. If you look it up in the dictionary, it says domesticated means they're your deal. Oh, really? I think so. Now, Dave, I have a dictionary over here. Go.

Do you? Chickens started in India and moved across Mesopotamia, then to Egypt, where they were for eating and fighting. Then chickens made their way to Rome and into Europe. But when Rome fell, so did the chicken. Such a shame. A lot of people don't remember that part of that. No, they don't. It doesn't come up in all the stories. No, they don't say chickens weren't built in this.

And then Hannibal rolled in. And then the chickens were like, I'm out of here, bro. Later. Later. We have fallen. Chicken out. Some believe the Romans had farms set up to fatten up the chickens, but when the farms were gone, the chickens returned to the normal size. That's the idea.

Sure. Europeans arriving in North America found a continent teeming with turkeys and ducks for the plucking and eating. Archaeologists believe that chickens were first brought to the New World by Polynesians who reached the Pacific coast of South America a century or so before Columbus. We're taking the chicken from the beginning of chickens to now. Now we're in America. We got the chicken into America. Well, in the 20th century, chickens played a relatively minor role in the American diet and economy, although people did enjoy their eggs. The breakthrough for chickens was the fortification of feed with antibiotics and vitamins, which allowed chickens to be raised indoors.

So chickens need sunlight to synthesize vitamin D like all things do. By the way, that was a thing that the coach of the 49ers, Bruce Walsh, used to do before Super Bowl games is he would take his team out of the hotel and make them walk around the hotel in the sunlight to get vitamin D. Smart. He was a winner. So through the first. Start doing that with me before dollars. You got it. That's actually a good idea.

So through the first decades of the 20th century, chickens spent their days wandering around a barnyard, you know, pecking for food. Sure. But now they can be sheltered from weather and predators and fed a controlled diet in an environment designed to have a minimum of distractions of antibiotics and just living. So now that they just now they're just these things in a in a warehouse and they just can't move because there's so many. Oh, now? Yeah, like factory farming. Yeah, factory farming. That's what arrived in the chicken was transformed from like the chicken into this protein producing thing that everyone loved.

No, they look like Hans and Franz chickens. They're insane. They love like tits. In the 1990s, chicken passed beef as America's favorite meat. And the cows are like, what's up? Yeah. Selecting breeding has made the chicken so docile that even if chickens are given access to outdoor space, a marketing device that qualifies the resulting meat to be sold as free range. So they just have to open the door to the fucking thing.

I know that it's bullshit, but I wasn't sure exactly how it was bullshit. Yeah, they just open the door and they go, look, they're free range. But the chickens are like, we don't even know what that is. Like if you had an agoraphobic and you open the door, you could be like, he's a social butterfly. Yeah, that's what these chickens are. They're agoraphobic because they've been so fucked up for so many years that you open the door now and they're like, what's that? Yeah. That's where you naturally should be.

I don't know what you're talking about, man. My family's been in a warehouse for like 34 generations. Yeah. And you know the machine that like picks them up before they go to slaughter, you've ever seen that thing? That to me is one of like the worst looking devices ever. Yeah, it's horrifying. It looks like a murder car wash. So when they are given access to outdoor space, they prefer hanging out at the mechanized trough waiting for the next delivery of food.

We've basically made chickens Americans. That's what I'm talking about. Chickens used to be great browsers, but they can't do that. All they want to do now is eat. It's good. It is hard to believe that these animals awaiting their turn in the fryer are the same animals that were worshiped in many parts of the Asian world for their fighting prowess and believed by the Romans to be a direct communication with fate. It's hard to believe that is until you hear the story of Mike.

Oh boy. Mike the chicken. Mike was a chicken. On September 10th, 1945, he died. That was a quick story. And that's where our story begins. Whoa. He was a plump five year old cockerel when he was beheaded on the 10th of September, 1945.

Okay. It was just a normal act on this farm. Farmer Lloyd Olson of Fruta, Colorado did the deed because his wife Clara was having her mother over for dinner that night. Right. Nice meal. Right. And also Noah knew that his mother-in-law enjoyed a bit of the roasted chicken neck. Yeah.

That was her thing. She liked the neck. Oh, the neck. So she was. She enjoyed the neck of the chicken. Right. Okay. So she was a murderer.

She's a horrible person. Gotcha. With that in mind, Olson tried to save most of Mike's neck. So he's trying to kill the bird. Who the fuck wants to eat a chicken neck? I don't eat chicken, but. That's a thing. Some people like chicken neck.

Neck? Neck. Other people eat the feet. The feet eating people. Some people eat the whole bird. Okay. Whole fucking bird. I don't eat them.

Right. But breast meat was the best. No, that's the way to go. Breast meat is fucking fantastic. Fucking beaks and claws. No, it's like a thing. But you can also eat the rest of it. You can pick away at the feet or anything.

You can eat anything. The cool thing about the feet is you can eat and then pick your teeth with it afterwards. It's not a cool thing. It's pretty cool. The only reason to order it is because you can do funny bits at the table with the feet. Right. You know, you can kind of do like a Benny and June sort of like dancing. Yep.

Like a dancing bread roll. Anything else? I think I'm out. So, he tried to save Mike's neck as much as he could when cutting off the head. Right? Uh-huh. It's a hard thing to do. So, he accidentally made his axe miss Mike's jugular vein, plus one ear and most of his

brain stem. So, he hit him high and he just, he missed the, he basically missed the neck. He got him above the neck area, took off some of the head, an ear, most of the brain stem. And then to his surprise, Mike didn't die. Mike reeled around like a headless chicken at first. Right? But then pretty soon he settled down. Yeah, you could.

You could calm down, did he? And he even started pecking at the ground for food with his new stump. Wait. And making preening motions and letting out throaty gurglings. This is a terrible story. So, Mike, Mike takes a whack and he, he gathers himself and he's basically got no head. He is, like, what are we, like, what are we talking about? Is his head just kind of like dangling to the side a little bit?

Is it his half? I think it's hanging on like, like a, like a, almost like a cuticle. Like, it's just a little bit, maybe the skin is just keeping it together. But it's just a head dangling and he's just the stump. And his upside down head is trying to eat? No, his throat is, his, his whole, his whole area, the wound is trying to eat. Medically speaking. Oh Christ.

Okay. Well, this is, this is. It's good. It's a good story. Mike reeled around. Oh, I already did that. And Olson, the farmer was bewildered and so he just left Mike. He was like, well, that you took a hit.

So I'm going to keep, I'm going to let you keep doing what you're doing. Crazy decision. The next crazy, crazy decision. The next morning. Yeah, it is a crazy decision. Yeah. It's sort of psychotic. Finish the fucking job.

No, it's sort of like a psychopath move. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he's a fighter. I'll let him live a horrible, a tortured life. The next morning when Olson found Mike asleep in the barn, having attempted to tuck his head under his wing as he always had, the farmer took it upon himself to figure out how to feed this complete monstrosity.

What the, this farmer is a fucking disaster. I don't know. He's pretty sweet. Well. He's going to try and feed the bird. All right. He's going to try and get it out. All Olson had to do is deposit food and water into Mike's exposed to some esophagus with

the eyedropper. He even got small grains of corn sometimes in as a treat. What? What kind of person is, let's it play out like this? I don't know. Is he schizophrenic? I mean, he was like, it was, he was going to just take off the neck. He did.

He's got like. No, he has a new shaped pet. He has a headless chicken that he's like put some seed in it. It's neck. Yeah. I mean, well, you, when you're presented with new things in life, maybe don't stamp him out. Maybe let him see how they play out.

Oh, okay. Maybe he was a religious man. He's like, well, God didn't want this chicken to die. We don't know what the deal was. Yeah. I get, well, look, you can use religion as any excuse. Okay. So he was religious.

So he's a fucking lunatic. Now. The reason Mike survived was because of how his skeleton was shaped. Because a chicken skull includes two huge holes for holding its eyes in place. Its brain fits snugly into the remaining space at a 45 degree angle. Right. So the eyes are here, 45 degree angle. This means you could slice.

They're good to scalp a bit of the brain off. Like if you go clean through this way, you can slice the brain off, right? You go to 90 degree angle, you go perpendicular. You slice the brain off. And then that means you leave a good portion of the cerebellum and brainstem behind. So if you lob straight, you've left a chunk of brain. And that's the chunk of brain that keeps you moving. Like you can take all kinds of hits to the brain, but if you brainstem, that's why zombies

have to be shot through the brain. Put your cerebellum and your brainstem. That's the offensive. Basically like it is a zombie chicken. Well, it's not a great, it's not a great chicken. And it's, it's not, it's not going to be me. So his little friend that he's like, this is a fighter is really just like an auto. I mean, well, he's, but what are chickens anyway?

Like it's not like before he was painting, like he's a chicken. So what's the difference between a chicken that's just got a brainstem left and a chicken that doesn't? Yeah. But I think that's the thing, right? Is like, you can't just judge the quote. Like if that were to be a human, we would be like, let's, let's end this for this person. Or would we put him in the circus?

Well, I mean, obviously if you listen to this podcast, we would take him on a fucking world tour. But I'm saying, and like morality wise. Yeah. Oh, morality wise. You, you, like this is not a, this is not a good life. I mean, it's, I am, I am, I am not arguing that the life's, the chicken's life is a great life or a good life or even a decent life, but it's a life, man.

We wouldn't let it, we wouldn't do this with a human. So you have the, you have the functioning part alive in the brain that keeps it looking like it's alive. So it's surviving. Yeah. So Mike Sarabella was positioned below the massive eye holes and was spared by the ax. So he's basically able to perform his basic motor functions and breathe. He was, he was more clumsy because he didn't have eyes.

So he'd fall over shit. Mike was so unfazed by the whole experience that Farmer Olsen decided to hit the road and take his miracle foul on a national tour. Okay. So why, I guess why is really the question, but, but. People want to see it, man. What the fuck? I mean.

You want to see the, I would actually, I would actually be interested in seeing that chicken. But we're done with this phase of history, right? We have, we have got like, it's hard to tell sometimes where we are actually at, but we are definitely out of the, I have a horrible disfigured creature. I don't know. Let's hit the road. I don't know where you are.

What about the cow at UC Davis? A tour with Carrot Top. The cow at UC Davis where they took off the side, they took off its side and replaced it with like fiberglass or plastic that you can see into it. So it just tours around or it stays at UC Davis, but anyway, people can go in and look and see this living cow, first I've heard of the fiberglass cow. Okay. Um, so why don't we put a pin in that and maybe we dial up that soon?

Cause that's insane. That's fucking insane. Mike was featured in Time Magazine and Life Magazine. What the fuck? He got his name in the Guinness Book of World Records. Biggest shithead. No, biggest, longest life without a head. Like he's fucking breaking records.

He's a record breaking chicken and he's popular. People like him. That's just been a fun call to make. He had his own side shows, uh, people were excited. The American public was excited. He did not have his own side show. The American public was excited. He was put in a fucking room and people paid money to see.

He wasn't like, all right, here's the lineup gang. All right, you'll do a quick 10 up top. I'll close out. The American public was excited to see Mike the headless wonder chicken, which was his name now. Mike even had his own manager who did a great job because he'd made Farmer Olsen a fortune at the height of his fame. Mike was making $4,500 a month and was valued at $10,000, which I think is a low valuation

if you're making 4500 a month. We need to stop rewarding morons is a lot more than a lot of people in America make right now. Yes. And that was 1945. Yes. And I don't think Mike is the one making this money. Well, he probably had nicer digs.

But he didn't fucking know he was a goddamn zombie chicken. He didn't have any fucking eye. He wasn't like, ooh, new shoes. He's probably being treated so much better than. But he's brain dead. He's not like, oh, nice bubble bath. His success resulted in a wave of copycat chicken beheadings. Oh, Christ.

So none of the unfortunate victims live more than a day or two. That okay. Because Mike was special. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was fucking special. I mean, that is just.

So there's a people all of the country trying to make chicken mikes. I know what I want to do with my life. I want to shred a chicken's brain and hit the road for a few months. Now, of course, Mike had no idea what was going on. Hey, me, Mike, there were many photos taken as part. Sideshow where Olson or his manager hold up Mike's dried severed head next to his neck. Sorry. OK, I'm really I'm really just I'm trying to get this visual in my head of what this

fucking thing. Say what you just said again for me. There are many photos taken as part of the sideshow where Farmer Olson or his manager would hold up Mike's dried severed head next to his neck. So they would hold up they would hold up the chicken who's just got like a head stump. And then they would hold up the head like the head that because he's lost the head. That's not really not a fresh head. Right.

At this point, it's been out there. Crispy. Yeah. It's a little crispy, dry, jerky. Yeah. It's not a good head. Although it turns out it wasn't even Mike's head. The truth.

The truth was that Olson's cat had actually ran off with Mike's original head. So they were using a different head, but no one knew the difference. I mean, Lee, look, if you're going to do this show, at least have some goddamn integrity. Well, I don't know. I don't know if there's any integrity involved in this at all. I don't think there. And I don't think there's anyone that's going to be like, hey, that ain't Mike's head. Yeah.

I knew Mike. Trust me. Anyone that's going to see a chicken neck show isn't really going to be like, hmm. They want to believe. I've done the math. That puzzle piece doesn't fit there. Yeah. They want to believe.

Yeah. Well, they all. They want to believe. No, they don't. They want to believe. They're fucking idiots. They want to believe. No, they're morons.

That things can be true. You want to go downtown to go see a chicken show? This chicken got most of its head cut off, and now it's a wonder chicken. Okay. So this went on for 18 months. He's on the road for 18 months, which is hard. We've been on the road. It's a fucking rough life being on the road.

It's hard enough living out of a suitcase, let alone having a quarter of your brain. The national tour took Mike and his farmer, uh, Olson to Phoenix. And as they were hanging out in their motel room, Mike was snacking on some corn bits. I love the way that this is fucking for hanging out and Mike's snacking. It's just a guy, a guy on his bed dead, and they're watching maybe the Texaco, the Texaco hour. Uh-huh. And, uh, and it's just, and the, and the chicken's just sitting there without a head.

Again, Mike's dead. And he's putting corn into the hole. Just a normal thing, just a farmer feeding a neck hole while watching TV and a super eight. Right. But then Mike began to choke. Really? I don't know what it sounds like.

Probably terrifying. Headless chicken is choking. Farmer Olson to his horror realized that he'd left the eyedropper at the previous day's show. So he was unable to clear the airways. You have one job at this point. And Mike choked to death. I mean, well, our, you know, our hearts go out to the family and friends of Mike, but

um, you, I mean, if this is, if you're, if you're, if you've locked yourself into some position where you were just going to give a lady a tur, a chicken neck and now you have a fucking freak beast that people want to go see for cats, you just have to remember to fucking keep it alive. He's going to keep the air hole. Keep that fucking eye. You have two eyedroppers. All you have to do.

Have a backup. Just feed it and keep the air hole open. Those are your only jobs. There's two jobs and count money. Three jobs. According to the official Mike, the headless chicken website, what in the 18 months he spent without his head, he grew from a mere 2.5 pounds to almost eight pounds. So he was fucking bringing it.

Like this is a chicken that was flourishing without a head, no, no, no, living the greatest time he had ever lost the part of his brain that was like, you're full, Mike, you're full. That was cut off when this fucking dickhead farmer, dickhead farmer, this is a chicken that's making $4,500 a month and living the life of fucking Riley, imagine being dumb enough to walk yourself ass backwards into having a headless chicken show. In an interview after his death, farmer Olson said, Mike was a quote, robust chicken, a fine specimen of a chicken, except for not having a head. He was, he was always so prophetic.

Farmer Olson. And I got to say he was very professional. Mike was a very professional chicken. Dave. Headless chicken. Dave, when you don't have a brain, you're probably going to seem like a rule follower. Farmer Olson took Mike's body to researchers at the University of Utah for an autopsy. And they wanted to study Farmer Olson instead.

Who found that a blood clot in Mike's neck had prevented him from bleeding to death when he was beheaded. So God put a blood clot in there. Probably the thousands of chickens that were trying to be the copycat chickens. So what I'm going to say to you now is that that brain didn't have a lot of blood going to it in the first place. So maybe he was better off without most of his head. What I'm going to say to you is that your back must hurt from that reach because that's

not true. I still love Mike in Colorado. Every third week of May, locals hold an annual Mike the Headless Chicken Festival where you can enjoy music and contests and food, which is what Mike would have wanted. No. He liked to eat. No. Especially corn.

How often do they hold this? Every year. Colorado, Mike the Headless Chicken Festival. Well, they should stop. I love Mike. Look, I love Mike too. It doesn't seem like you do. Yeah, no, the farmer's just a dickhead, and I just think you're giving, we're giving

this, this chicken is not a folk hero. It's a blood clot. It's basically a walking blood clot. I think we're going to agree to disagree about how much of a hero he was. He was not a hero. He was, he was not a hero. He's a hero. That's the end of our small about American hero, Mike the Chicken.

No. The Wonder Chicken and no. He's a hero. That's the end of our small about American hero.