Re: Mike the headless chicken
n4mwd.dont.spam.me_at_amsat.org
Date: 11/06/04
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Date: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 00:31:11 GMT
"Ted Richardson" <le510r@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> From BBC 2 QI programme
>
> http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/story.htm
>
>
Mike is not alone.......
The Headless Rooster
Compiled from Star Beacon, February 7, 1997
Occasionally, after having their heads chopped off, a chicken
will "run around", but this is not because the chicken is still alive.
Rather, it is due to nervous impulses that cause the chicken’s muscles
to move involuntarily. Tell that to John Marrison of Ashtabula, Ohio.
He knows all about killing chickens. He has chopped off enough
rooster heads to know. But one time, things were different.
It was new years eve morning in 1946. John and his wife Helen
were planning on having chicken for dinner on New Year’s Day. John
went out with his trusty double bit axe and picked a lively White Rock
rooster for a date with the dinner table. After a single quick blow,
the rooster’s head fell off and the rest of the chicken flopped around
for a few minutes. John tossed the bird in a bucket, put it in the
basement for his wife to clean, and then went to work.
Later that morning Helen called John at work and said, "Honey,
that chicken is alive down in the basement walking around." John went
home to see and sure enough, there he was. John put it in a box and
began caring for it. He had hamburger on New Year’s Day. John said
that if the rooster wanted to live that bad then he didn’t feel like
eating him.
News of John’s headless rooster spread fast. It got national
media attention. But a little too much attention from some radical
animal rights people of the time. They marched up to John’s house
with two sheriff deputies and demanded that the bird be killed in a
humane way. John then took the bird to the local vet who examined it
and performed a little surgery to make it easier for it to eat. The
vet squelched the jabberings of the animal rights people by stating
that since the rooster had no head, he also had no brain, and since he
had no brain, he could not feel any pain.
John took the bird home and kept it alive by feeding it a diet
of scratch, grit, water, and oatmeal. It either stayed in the box or
walked around the basement. John said that he never saw the bird sit
down and that it seemed unaware of whatever was going on. The rooster
would allow people to touch him and pick him up. John’s vigil of care
continued for 39 days when the rooster finally died. John was so
attached to that headless rooster that he had it stuffed and mounted.
About 6.5 million chickens are slaughtered in the United
States every year. C.R. Parkhurst, a professor at North Carolina
State University’s Poultry Science Department, said that the method
that the poultry industry uses for slaughter pretty much prevents the
birds from living very long.
Processing plants shackle the chicken and hang them from their
feet on a moving conveyor belt. The birds are passed through a tunnel
where they are sprayed with a mist of salt water. Salt water is a
good conductor of electricity and the birds are then electrocuted into
unconsciousness. While still hanging upside down, the birds are
passed by a buzz saw. The saw makes a cut about 1/4 inch into their
neck, severing the carotid artery and juggler vein. The chickens are
killed by allowing them to bleed to death before being scalded and
processed. About one in 1,000 chickens will not die in this manner
and will have to be finished off by a knife-wielding worker. "But
none of them walk off the processing line headless", said Parkhurst.
That just makes John Marrison’s rooster all the more amazing.
"I never killed another chicken since then," John said, "It just took
that urge out of me."
Dennis Hawkins
n4mwd AT amsat DOT org (humans know what to do)
To find out what an H-1B is and how Congress is using
them to put Americans out of work, visit the following
web site and click on the "Exporting America" CNN news
video: http://zazona.com/ShameH1B/MediaClips.htm
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