X-Message-Number: 5688
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 20:40:11 -0800
From:  (American Cryonics Society)
Subject: Drop a Headless Chicken from the Leaning Tower of Pisa

About two years ago, inspired by Mike Darwin's success in raising chickens
in town, we aquired a couple of two-week old chicks which were "sexed" as
90% female.  While an inquiry to city hall indicated that the town would
allow up to four chickens per household, I feared that the first time
neighbors "got wind" of them, we would have a big man with a badge at our
door.  As a partial precaution against such a happening, we named them Fido
and Bowser.  After all, if the neighbors heard us calling our chickens,
they would assume we had a couple of dogs.  If I thought the neighbors
could hear them cackling, I would put my head out the window and yell:
"Bowser and Fido, stop barking."  The neighbors would then simply think we
had a couple of Pekinese, with their strange, high-pitched, barks.

Fido was murdered by a raccoon, who invaded our yard, bit the gentle Fido's
head off, and carried her body to the side of our pool, where the viscious
beast eviscerated our little chicken, washing the entrails in the
clorinated water before devouring them.

Bowser is still with us, fat and sassy, and now has a companion chicken
named Daisy.  During the laying season we usually get an egg per chicken
per day.  For what it is worth, Daisy is a "Production Brown" that does not
molt (chickens stop laying during and after the molt) and, therefor, lays
year around.

The chickens have been much better pets than I expected.  They are really
"lap chickens," especially Bowser.  I have yet to figure out how to house
break them, however.

So far this post, and part of Mike's, looks more like it would be at home
in a "City Agriculture" user group.  I'll conclude the above by suggesting
that cryonicists generally will benefit from some experience with animals
besides dogs and cats.  Many of my cryonicist friends are so remote from
the living world that they have no idea what "running around like a chicken
with its head cut off" means;  or "mad as a wet hen;" or "strutting around
like a Bantam Rooster."  Killing, plucking, cleaning (disemboweling), and
freezing, a fowl (in preparation for future fried chicken) is an excellent
lesson in anatomy and elementary cool-down.  Care of chickens teaches about
disease, how it is spread, and prevented.

We have also learned a lot about how acute are bird senses; how they
communicate; group dynamics; inter-species communication.  The list could
go on.

While the benefit to cryonicists from raising chickens is probably not
great enough to justify the hobby, there are other advantages which make
the pursuit worth while.  These include: the pleasure of pet ownership,
fresh eggs, and the knowledge that your eggs didn't come from enslaving a
beautiful little animal in a cage so small she can't even properly stand.

We don't kill or eat our pet chickens (purely a personal choice).  Neither
do we suspend them after their fatal encounters with raccoons or other
ireversible mishaps (not even head only suspensions).  However, coming from
a small town with grandparents still on the farm, I, like Mike, can speak
from first hand experience about headless chickens.

Farm people will talk your ears off, complete with graphic examples, of how
one or another method of slaughtering the tasty birds, is best.  My
grandmother would place the chicken's head under a broomstick, stand on the
broomstick, then pull up on the chicken's feet until the neck separated
from the head.  This technique appears at least as humane (or inhumane) as
chopping off the head; and there is no danger of mishaps with an ax, or of
only partly severing the neck.  However, this method's chief advantage to
country folk, is that the head is separated at the first neck joint,
ensuring that the complete neck is available for consumption.

Yes, the head remains "alive" for some time after it is separated from the
body.  The eyes will blink, and the beak open and close.

The rest of the chicken jumps, flops, and flaps around madly for some time
(maybe 20 seconds).  I have never witnessed a headless chicken "run."  This
makes sense, when you consider that the center which controls equilibrium
is in the chicken's head.  The headless chicken doesn't know which way is
up, so as its nervous system reacts, it is just as likely to be "running"
upside down, or sideways, as with both feet planted on the ground, one
after the other, Olympic sprint style.

I have heard that a battlefield casualty will sometimes exhibit much the
same behavior.

I'm going to keep out of the argument of what this behavior might suggest
to people considering whether to take or leave their bodies when they
embark on the time trip.

Whether or not such headless chicken antics is "running" or "flapping"
depends on one's point of view.  However, the experiment is easily
performed.  Live chickens are plentiful, either from poultry houses, or
from farmers.  I'll wager most net users can come up with a chicken in
short order.  If any of you don't have the other needed implement, I'll
lend my grandma's old broomstick.  Instead of reading what the old Greeks
wrote, then carefully balancing the opinion of one against the other to
decide if headless chickens run, why not drop a chicken or two from the
Leaning Tower of Pisa?


Long life,

Jim Yount

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American Cryonics Society                 (408)734-4200
                   FAX (408)734-4441
P.O. Box 1509
Cupertino, CA 95015
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