Koo Koo, the Bird Girl was born Minnie Woolsey in 1880. When she died is unknown, but accounts show that she was still alive in 1960. Woolsey suffered from a rare skeletal disorder called Virchow-Seckel syndrome, which caused her to have a very short stature, a small head, a narrow birdlike face with a beak-like nose, large eyes with an antimongoloid slant, a receding jaw, large ears, and mild mental retardation. In addition, Woolsey was bald, toothless, and either completely blind or very short sighted.
She appeared in the 1932 film Freaks (along with a cast of other sideshow performers from the time) and has no lines in the film but is seen in many scenes.