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The Song Challenge:   That's One Scrappy Rooster! -- For 18 months in the 1940s, it seemed as if Mike the headless chicken might be immortal.   Now he's being immortalized in a 4-foot metal sculpture to be stuck in a planter on a downtown corner in his hometown of Fruita, Colorado.   The 300-pound replica of Mike was made using ax heads and hay-rake teeth, along with sickle blades and other cutting objects.   "I made him proud-looking and cocky," said the artist, Lyle Nichols, a Fruita native.   The rooster belonged to Fruita farmer Lloyd Olsen, who planned to put Mike into the cooking pot and lopped off his head at the base of the skull to leave as much of the tasty neck as possible.   But Mike just fluffed up his feathers -- although he could only go through the motions of pecking for food, and when he tried to crow, a gurgle came out.   But he was still alive the next morning.   Olsen started putting feed and water directly into Mike's gullet with an eyedropper.   Mike lived for 18 months, making it into Life magazine and the Guinness Book of World Records, and was a popular attraction until he choked to death on a corn kernel in an Arizona motel while on tour.   Fruita officials dug up his story last spring when they were looking for something besides pioneers to focus on for Colorado Heritage Week.   That led to the first Mike the Headless Chicken Festival.   In addition to food (fried chicken) and music, this year's festival is scheduled to feature "The Run Like A Chicken With Your Head Cut Off 5K."

Immortality by Bradypus
(Tune:  'When I'm Sixty-Four', by Lennon and McCartney)

When I was younger I lost my head
Many years ago
The way that the axe hit me, I should have been dead
My body didn't want to know
Rush about the yard with my chest puffed out
Proud as proud can be
Seems like I'd found it, no doubt about it
Immortality

Life is much different, without a head
Now I cannot crow
There are compensations for a headless cock
Owner takes me round for a show
Scraping the barnyard, can't eye the chicks
Headless, I can't see
I know you need me, how will you feed me?
Immortality

Ev'ry morning I'd be fed and groomed and cleaned and looking swell
Then we'd hit the road
People came to view
Ah, they wondered, where's the trick
What a how to do.

Then the time came when my luck ran out
Good times were all gone
In the motel sadly my last life was spent
Choking on a grain of corn
Scythes and scrap iron, sickles and blades
Statue for all to see
I hold the record, live without neck cord
Immortality

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