A friend sent me a link to a video about Mike the chicken. The story is
that a farmer slaughtered 40 chickens, chopping their heads off with an
axe. One of them recovered from the beheading. It seems that the botched
hatchet job had missed the jugular vein and left enough of the bird's
brain stem and a clot stopped the blood loss. They fed him with an eye
dropper. The farmer took the chicken on the road and making appearances
at circus freak shows.

The video looks kind of hokey and fake, but I checked it out online and
it's true. Mike met his final fate in a motel room when the owner left
his feed out. The bird choked on a kernel of corn. The entire story is
amazing, even the fact that a chicken got choked in a cheap motel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSjgHj2dF8


My father grew up on a farm and told us once that he had chopped a head
off a chicken to be cooked for supper. The headless chicken ran, jumped
up and sat it a roost for a while. She only lasted a few minutes without
her head.