Koo Koo

"Koo Koo the Bird Girl" was born Minnie Woolsey in Rabun County, Georgia in 1880. She suffered from a rare congenital skeletal disorder called Virchow-Sechel or Harper's syndrome, also known as bird-headed dwarfism or nanocephaly). This syndrome is very rare and is characterized by various physical shortcomings, such as a small head, stunted growth, a beak-like nose, receding jaw as well as mental limitations. In addition, it left Minnie toothless and almost completely bald and blind. The story goes that she was rescued from a dismal life in a Georgia insane asylum by an enterprising showman, who thought her strange looks would be enough to cash in on. She began her showbiz career as "Minnie Ha-Ha," an obvious play on North Carolina's Minnihaha Falls. In her act, she would appear in a phony Native American costume and would dance and shake excitedly, speaking gibberish to the sideshow audience. Minnie was initially relunctant and shy, but soon she came to love the attention she received. There is frequent confusion about the name "Koo Koo the Bird Girl" in sideshow circles. The first "Koo Koo" was Elizabeth "Betty" Green (also known as "The Stork Woman"); Woolsey actually took the name at a later date. Although they both appeared in the film Freaks (1932), it is Minnie who is credited as "The Bird Girl", and Elizabeth by her real name. She had no lines in Freaks, but Minnie made a lasting impression on moviegoers when she dressed in a feathery costume (complete with a tiny plumed cap and chicken-like feet) and shimmied on the table during the wedding feast of Cleopatra the trapeze artist and Hans the dwarf. In later years, Minnie worked at Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York as "Koo Koo, the Blind Girl from Mars". By that time, age or perhaps boredom had replaced her dancing, and she would primarily stand or sit in a near comatose state, confounding spectators by failing to respond to any visual stimuli. It's unknown exactly how long Minnie performed with the circus, but some accounts show that she was still living (and almost run over by a car) in the 1960s, when she would have been in her 80s.