Urban Legends, version T.3

I love to scare myself and give others a million things to contemplate.  I love passing along or disproving urban legends, depending on my mood, and I like to give almost religious meaning to the everyday tasks we go about as members of modern society because I believe in the importance of RITUAL and observing SUPERSTITION.  It's easy to fizzle away into this ordinary meaningless existence when not paying attention, and I believe that a healthy fear/respect of the unknown is the first step to prevent becoming at least totally jaded or having some real existential issues. 

On urban legends:  I am a SUCKER for these.  I love love love the depth they give to the boring landscape of suburbia or the North American countryside.  I love them as fables used to scare little kids into being good, I love them as preludes to hot make-out sessions all over the nation.  Sometimes, though.  Ugh.  Sometimes I research one that I end up having something AGAINST.  Here's one. 

URBAN LEGEND:  A rooster lived for 18 months with it's head chopped off.

TRUE.

Strange but true. A farmer from Fruita, Colo., thought he was just putting dinner on the table when he picked up an axe and beheaded one of his chickens. What happened next became the stuff of legend: The headless rooster bobbed and weaved back to the henhouse and lived for 18 more months.

The animal, later dubbed Mike and celebrated with a festival, Web sites and various magazine articles, survived because the blade missed his jugular vein and a clot prevented him from bleeding to death. The axe blow landed high enough that most of the chicken's brain stem and one ear remained intact. Mike was fed and watered by inserting an eyedropper directly into his gullet. Sadly, he later choked to death in a motel room.

Residents of Fruita remember Mike as "a big fat chicken who didn't know he didn't have a head."

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little for a couple reasons.  Once, I fell in love with a cat at the Tacoma Humane Society with three legs.  Somethin' just ain't right about a recently-made Tripod kitty hobbling around and falling on his little face, but I loved him anyway.  He was born that way.  It's hard to compare a missing LEG with a missing HEAD, however-  Kitty was not purposely rendered a tripod.  Uh, not to my knowledge.  Rooster, though...oh, Rooster.  You were nothing but an intended victim of homicide, or, poultricide, okay, you were an intended meal for some farmer's tummy.  Someone came at your neck with an axe.  Now you're headless.  But instead of a meal, you are a pet.  The same people who wanted to kill you and eat you are now parading you around like you're the Queen of England.  Not because you're a cute animal with some personality, but because you're a decapitated rooster-freak.  They made money from your humiliation, pain, and exploitation.  And there is not a right angle in that. 

Peace out, little rooster.  You deserved someone who'd pet you feathers when you had a FACE.  Or, at least, a merciful death.