[man2525]

Sideshow (actual) geeks used this trick to keep chickens from wriggling when they bit their heads off. Heard so from my dad. Not sure where he heard it. Avid reader, but he was a journalist in the 1970s and early 1980s. He might have heard it from someone he interviewed. Maybe Red Skelton, as he would have been alive in an era that allowed it, and would have needed work in either a sideshow or circus.