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Post by auntym on Aug 20, 2012 11:40:40 GMT -6
UFOTV® Presents : FIELDS OF FEAR: The Alien Connection Published on Aug 16, 2012 by UFOTVstudios This full length feature explores the alien connection to the cattle mutilation phenomenon through the work of retired championship cattle breeder Fern Belzil, who has become the unlikely expert on the subject. Is it the work of space aliens, or is there a more prosaic, terrestrial explanation? Featuring Fern Belzil, Greg Bishop, Kevin Randle and Nick Redfern. For More Information Go to www.UFOTV.com
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Post by Deleted on Aug 21, 2012 4:56:25 GMT -6
Has anyone had a chance to watch this yet?
I hope I have time tonight. Not like I'm really looking forward to it, but yet this type of "event" should have some physical evidence. . . . (er, other than dead bodies).
Thanks Auntym ;D
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Post by skywalker on Aug 21, 2012 16:59:29 GMT -6
I haven't watched the video yet but I have seen a lot of photos of cattle mutilations. There is definitely something weird going on there. Something is killing the cows and slicing parts off of them. It's definitely not natural.
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Post by paulette on Aug 21, 2012 23:34:39 GMT -6
I had seen this on TV earlier and sat and intently watched this here. The man in St. Paul has credibility and trust of his fellow ranchers and his community. Then there is the case mentioned where the police were assigned to watch a dead cow in Arkansas. They said (police not veternarians) that the predator signs looked the same as "mutilated cows". Then there's Fern who watched a deer go through natural stages of decomposition and predation. And said it definitely did not look like the mutilations. Who are you going to believe? A rancher or a patrolman??
"Some day we'll see something. We might not like what we see but we'll see something..."
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Post by Deleted on Aug 26, 2012 11:14:39 GMT -6
I watched this video yesterday. Paulette just said what I was going to say . This video is also well done in that it shows "prize cows". Did you see the size of that one Fern was standing with? When cattle is well cared for, brushed, and that sort of thing, wow! If a man doesn't have too many, I can picture him going out to pasture with them and walking among them, and checking on them. My cousins and I playfully named some of my grandfathers cows ;D. As for evidence of this phenomenon, I was hoping for tracks in the ground and signs of radiation. Its not enough that other cows avoid the area. Fern did not talk about the aspects of ranchers seeing weird lights in their fields. . . IMO, whoever (whatever) is doing this, is trying to make it look like a natural predator situation, and fooling some people.
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Post by skywalker on Aug 26, 2012 11:41:50 GMT -6
I would imagine it is probably a little bit of both. Some reported cow "mutilations" are just natural deaths and decomposition while others are actual mutilations done by somebody...or something. Just because somebody investigates one that turns out to be a natural death that doesn't mean they all are. In addition to the lights the farmers are reporting they also see a lot of black helicopters sneaking around the area. Could the Feds (or somebody else) be trying to cover up the mutilations by tampering with the evidence? It's not like the government has never done that before. I still haven't had a chance to watch the video but I definitely want to. This one looks like it will be good.
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Post by plutronus on Aug 27, 2012 15:41:20 GMT -6
I would imagine it is probably a little bit of both. Some reported cow "mutilations" are just natural deaths and decomposition while others are actual mutilations done by somebody...or something. Just because somebody investigates one that turns out to be a natural death that doesn't mean they all are. In addition to the lights the farmers are reporting they also see a lot of black helicopters sneaking around the area. Could the Feds (or somebody else) be trying to cover up the mutilations by tampering with the evidence? It's not like the government has never done that before. ::) I still haven't had a chance to watch the video but I definitely want to. This one looks like it will be good. :) SkyWalker,
Re; Cattle Mutes & the ET connection
Colm Kelleher (Ph.D. cancer research scientist), who was (?still is?) NIDS (owned and operated by Robert Bigelow, billionaire, BAAS) ET Field Unit Research Director (1992 ~ 2001), was assigned to the Sherman Ranch (bought by Bigelow, due to the paranormal ET activity there) along with Dr. Onet (Ph.D. Vetinarian, scientist, specialty cattle mutilations) and Dr. Eric Davis (Ph.D., ex-military physicist, scientist), and Dr. Jacques Vallee, (Ph.D. Computer Engineering, scientist) and others I'm not at liberty to disclose. Durring the period they lived on and studied the phenomenon at and around the Sherman Ranch, there were dozens of cattle mutilations, some of which were out right creepy. And lots of cryptids. Black helicopters. Impossible cattle mutes, strange camera malfunctions, and red luminous-orbs...when see them, run.
I recommend reading these two books on the subject, both written by Dr. Kelleher:
1) The Hunt for the Skinwalker, 2) The Brain Trust (was listed on New York BSL)
"The Brain Trust" has the best information in my opinion while giving a glimpse of the scientist's thinking process and where he's been in his funded (by several different billionaires) study of the alien presence problem, while not squeaking a peep about how the information was acquired or that there was anything to do with ET, dimensional portals, luminous-orbs, flying saucers, all manners of cryptids and or shadow people contacts, which is outlined in the companion book researched and written at the same time, "The Hunt for the Skinwalker" in some detail. It is a scholarly read. Always the consummate thinker, he co-wrote the "Skinwalker book" with Knapp, clever subterfuge, Kelleher is a very smart guy.
plutronus
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Post by skywalker on Aug 28, 2012 19:40:49 GMT -6
I wasn't aware that there were any cattle mutilations out there. I've never read the Skinwalker book though. I might have to add both of those to my reading list.
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Post by auntym on Sept 17, 2014 11:19:17 GMT -6
ufodigest.com/article/dead-cows-0916 “I SEE DEAD COWS” - TOWARD A MUTILATED VISION OF REALITYBy Scott Corrales September 16, 2014 By Alejandro Agostinelli – Factor 302.4 They return every so often, especially when the weather grows cold and the media runs out of stuff to talk about, or the story runs afoul of a hungry editor starving for a juicy ration of paranormal ghoulishness. The flaps of “cow mutilations” or cases involving “cattle mutilations” represent a branch phenomenon of popular ufology or the urge to find evidence of extraterrestrial activity on Earth. It is also kept alive, however, by other media-created mysteries, such as the Chupacabras, or it receives a dose of crafty explanations such as those built by conspiracy theorists (which should not be cast aside, despite their minimal diffusion, as these are often turned into successful sci-fi scripts). On August 25 of this year, the La Nación newspaper published another news item. Last year another appeared in Tucumán, and if we keep searching, or google back even further, there isn’t a year that does not include a report on this mystery that proves hard to extinguish. Likewise, we find a more intensive presence in provinces such as Entre Rios, where local UFO groups – highly interested in the matter – publicize accounts that would otherwise go unnoticed. In 2002, this phenomenon manifested itself in Argentina with unprecedented strength. Personally, its importance was such that a chapter based on the matter displaced another on the mysteries of Capilla del Monte in my book Invasores: Historias Reales de Extraterrestres en Argentina (Sudamericana, 2009). The following is an abbreviated version of the most theoretical part of the chapter included in Invasores: 12 years ago, Argentina experienced its first ufological cow-icide. I started in April and reached its climax in June 2002, particularly in the province of Buenos Aires and the Pampean region. Farmhands, cattlemen and local residents woke up to find dead cows of all breeds and ages all over the place. Dozens of bovine carcasses rested near circles of flattened grass, near empty water tanks – drained by who knows what and for which reason – and others in unusual circumstances. All of the animals presented as “proof” of the flap bore similar injuries: their edges were irregular, as though cauterized. According to farmhands and cattlemen, these incisions appeared to have a purpose. Their carcasses had been despoiled of their soft tissue (tongue, eyes, ears, nipples, genitals, udders) and sometimes they appeared exsanguinated. Locals would sink their knives into them and the blade would emerge dry, as if they had been plunged into a piece of pound cake. The discovery of over two hundred mutilated animal carcasses was reported in less than three months, a ruthless and doubtful notion, but giving the impression that an intelligence had been at work and the deaths were not due to natural causes, such as the onset of the cold of winter or seasonal diseases followed by the instinct of certain predators looking for nourishment. Agreement between cattlemen, journalists, policemen and ufologists was overwhelming: the incisions looked artificial. These animals filled the ranks of the bizarre while predator activity was dismissed by some veterinarians in their homilies. The cult of the mutilated cow was confected by all of them, with or without an awareness of the subject. The flap ended almost if by decree. On July 1, 2002, the National Food Safety and Quality Service (SENASA) blamed the weather and carrion animals. Presto: a mystery cauterized. CONTINUE READING: ufodigest.com/article/dead-cows-0916
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Post by auntym on Sept 18, 2014 12:52:59 GMT -6
ufodigest.com/article/dead-cows-0917 “I SEE DEAD COWS” - TOWARD A MUTILATED VISION OF REALITY - PART 2By Scott Corrales If you missed Part I of this article click here! ufodigest.com/article/dead-cows-0916The cattle mutilation wave did not occur at just any moment in time. The harsh reality suggested that attention given to these “strange events” responded to the infinity of existing social concerns. The mystery, therefore, could be considered an outgrowth of the crisis. According to the theory’s most newfangled variant, the phenomenon had been deliberately inflated to distract the population from the nation’s state of malaise. But more than a smokescreen, the exaggerated diffusion of such news looked like another symptom of the same illness. On December 19, 2001, a crowd of Argentineans took the streets, banging on cooking pots, to protest against a government asleep in the midst of the most brutal crisis of recent history. Ferocious reprisals followed the protests, resulting in thirty-nine dead at the hands of the police. Bank freezes, the uncontrolled dollar and high rates of unemployment added to the sad national ordeal. The ashes were still hot in 2002. Shortly before the wave of alien cattle rustling, the emblem of creole opulence had been prey to minor “depredations”. It is still hard to forget the image broadcast by a news program, when a truck with beef cattle overturned on the outskirts of Rosario, Santa Fe, in 2001 and a crowd surged to butcher the animals on the roadside. Other factors – frivolous to some, but serious in their psycho-social impact – fostered the dejected popular mood: around the same time, the Argentinean football team had been eliminated from the world cup in the first round. For once, a modern expression of the supernatural drew the interest of two specialists in myth and legends. Martha Blache and Silvia Balzano, researchers with CONICET, put forth an explanatory model for the events. They suggested the possible interconnection between Chupacabras reports, the penetration of genetically-modified sorghum and the use of new herbicides whose preparation is controlled by American laboratories. They wondered, for example, if the phenomenon might not be a warning against the uncertainty created by these changes and the perceived lack of control evinced by cattlemen. Globalization may be related to the role played by a country that “benefits from our raw materials and natural resources, removing them in an efficient yet imperceptible manner,” without leaving traces. News about cattle mutilations, they write, seemed to condense a wider metaphor reflecting a country in a state of crisis that is trying to identify the culprits. Who is attacking the cows, tame and apathetic representative of Argentine heritage? Is our blood being sucked by international agencies or domestic carrion animals?” The popular imagination, they conclude, “could sublimate the conflicting demands of the IMF with regard to the foreign debt.” (6) In proposing their model, Blache and Balzano did not conduct a survey on the political trends or the technical-scientific concerns of cattlemen. Implementing a sort of psycho-cultural analysis using press clippings is always risky. But the authors are the first to say that their hypothesis rests only on journalistic sources. At least they didn’t keep quiet. CONTINUE READING: ufodigest.com/article/dead-cows-0917
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Post by auntym on Dec 3, 2014 14:58:33 GMT -6
ufodigest.com/article/possible-theories-1202 WHO IS INVOLVED WITH THE ANIMAL MUTILATIONS: POSSIBLE THEORIESBy Chris Holly / endlessjrny.blogspot.com/December 2, 2014 To make sense of any problem it is best to try to develop a plan or theory that at least lists the pieces of the problem in order to take a proper look at the problem you are trying to solve or at least better understand. Once you have the parts listed you can search for similarities, differences to develop a formula or direction to sort out your pieces to try to at least see if there is a path to some answers. One area of the unknown that I find repulsive and extremely strange is that of the ongoing revolting issue of animal mutilation. I have been trying to pick out the pieces to see if I can find a path to this puzzle. It is a terrible issue that needs to be solved so that one day it can be stopped. The most common and well known would be that of cattle mutilation. This has been going on for a very long time all over the world where cattle can be found cleanly gutted and dropped back to the areas from which they were taken. It is always a clean kill with out the remains of an animal attack . They are clean cuts , not chewed or torn and bloodless . It also is the most researched kind of animal mutilation but certainly not the only type of animal mutilation taking place. Over the years I have read about many different animals found worldwide that have been found in a way that lends to mutilation rather than nature that killed them including the strange cat mutilations leaving cats returned gutted with clean precise cuts. The cats are returned to their owners looking like hand puppets. This strange practice has been recorded worldwide for over 25 years. It is not a local or onetime event it is an epidemic of madness as well as cold cruelty. As I process what is going on around the world with this issue I realize I am not looking at one issue but more like a few different issues all lost in the convoluted ciaos of a very ugly subject matter. Much like UFO’s or abduction it is not one kind of craft or one kind of abduction being seen or taking place it is a list of different unidentified objects and abduction scenarios that have been all shoved under one title. That thinking and approach keeps us igannant and far from solving any of these subjects which of course is exactly how the powers that be want it to be. Mutilation is suffering from the same ‘thrown in the same pot’ dilemma. Mutilation by name and definition is off putting and terrifying. People do not want to look at it, hear about it, or discuss it. Sadly that is not working as a method of handing it as they continue to happen and that is what we need to address. I have thought about this and admit I do not have any answers however I do have a few theories why they happen. Each circumstance is different yet easily hidden under the one umbrella title as the event in every situation is revolting and something we all would rather not deal with including me. There may be multiple possible culprits involved with cattle mutilations. In fact I can think of three possibilities and think it is very possible all three are happening in order to use the events of the other sources who are actively doing them too as a cover. It works out well as it is a simple case of blaming the other guy for this repulsive deed as different participants take, slaughter and then dump the dead animal back to the area from which is was taken. Those doing these things can freely go along doing what they are doing with the animals for reasons we may never fully understand knowing that other sources will most likely be blamed, who are also doing it, which ends with all of the suspects getting away without any repercussions. I think it is possible that our own secret or black ops part of our government is tracking possible disease or defects that have infiltrated our food chain by following the cattle ranchers across the country secretly as not to alarm the public or the ranchers or farmers to possible virus or bacteria that may have slipped in to our food chain. Following the cattle ranchers across the country, or world for that matter; to randomly take an animal to quickly slaughter for whatever they need to test in a way that is quickly done by advanced black ops operations. This of course includes throwing the unused body of the cow back down on the ground rather than carrying the weight with them. This could be possibly done by silent black helicopter crafts that have been reported seen by t cattle owners over their land. Also it would make sense to dump the remains of the animal especially if they are on a mission where more than one animal is being taken and tested. CONTINUE READING: ufodigest.com/article/possible-theories-1202
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Post by Deleted on Feb 7, 2016 17:17:59 GMT -6
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Post by auntym on Apr 13, 2019 12:17:54 GMT -6
mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/04/cattle-mutilations-how-the-fbi-got-involved/ Cattle Mutilations: How the FBI Got Involvedby Nick Redfern / mysteriousuniverse.org/author/nredfern/April 13, 2019 Since at least 1967, reports have surfaced throughout the United States of animals – but, chiefly, cattle – slaughtered in bizarre fashion. Organs are taken and significant amounts of blood are found to be missing. In some cases, the limbs of the cattle are broken, suggesting they have been dropped to the ground from a significant height. Evidence of extreme heat, to slice into the skin of the animals, has been found at mutilation sites. Eyes are removed, tongues are sliced off, and, typically, the sexual organs are gone. While the answers to the puzzle remain frustratingly outside of the public arena, theories abound. They include extraterrestrials, engaged in nightmarish experimentation of the genetic kind; military programs involving the testing of new bio-warfare weapons; occult-based groups that sacrifice the cattle in ritualistic fashion; and government agencies secretly monitoring the food-chain, fearful that something worse than “Mad Cow Disease” may have infected the U.S. cattle herd – and, possibly, as a result, the human population, too. Cattle mutilations are a favorite topic of UFO researchers and conspiracy theorists. From the mid-1970s to the dawning of the 1980s, however, the phenomenon was of varying degrees of concern to another body: the FBI. But, how and why did the FBI get involved? It’s an important question that requires an answer. From January to March 1973, the state of Iowa was hit hard by cattle mutilations. Not only that, many of the ranchers who lost animals reported seeing strange lights and black-colored helicopters in the direct vicinity of the attacks. That the FBI took keen notice of all this is demonstrated by the fact that, as the Freedom of Information Act has shown, it collected and filed numerous media reports on the cattle-mutes in Iowa. The next piece of data dates from early September 1974. That’s when the FBI’s director, Clarence M. Kelley, was contacted by Senator Carl T. Curtis, who wished to inform the Bureau of a wave of baffling attacks on livestock in Nebraska – the state in which Curtis resided and represented. At the time, the FBI declined to get involved, as Director Kelley informed the senator: “It appears that no Federal Law within the investigative jurisdiction of the FBI has been violated, inasmuch as there is no indication of interstate transportation of the maimed animals.” One year later, in August 1975, Senator Floyd K. Haskell, of Colorado, made his voice known to the FBI, on the growing cattle mutilation controversy: “For several months my office has been receiving reports of cattle mutilations throughout Colorado and other western states. At least 130 cases in Colorado alone have been reported to local officials and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI); the CBI has verified that the incidents have occurred for the last two years in nine states. The ranchers and rural residents of Colorado are concerned and frightened by these incidents. The bizarre mutilations are frightening in themselves: in virtually all the cases, the left ear, rectum and sex organ of each animal has been cut away and the blood drained from the carcass, but with no traces of blood left on the ground and no footprints.” The senator had much more to say, too: “In Colorado’s Morgan County area there has [sic] also been reports that a helicopter was used by those who mutilated the carcasses of the cattle, and several persons have reported being chased by a similar helicopter. Because I am gravely concerned by this situation, I am asking that the Federal Bureau of Investigation enter the case. Although the CBI has been investigating the incidents, and local officials also have been involved, the lack of a central unified direction has frustrated the investigation. It seems to have progressed little, except for the recognition at long last that the incidents must be taken seriously. Now it appears that ranchers are arming themselves to protect their livestock, as well as their families and themselves, because they are frustrated by the unsuccessful investigation. Clearly something must be done before someone gets hurt.” Again, the FBI declined to get involved in the investigation of the phenomenon. It was a stance the FBI stuck to (despite collecting numerous, nationwide newspaper and magazine articles on the subject) until 1978. That was when the FBI learned of an astonishing number of horse and cattle mutilations in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico – mutilations which actually dated back to 1976. They had all been scrupulously investigated and documented by Police Officer Gabe Valdez of Espanola. It was when the FBI was contacted by New Mexico Senator Harrison Schmitt (also the twelfth person to set foot on the Moon – in December 1972), who implored the FBI to get involved, that action was finally taken. In March 1979, Assistant Attorney General Heymann prepared a summary on the New Mexico cases for the FBI, and – for good measure – photocopied all of Officer Valdez’s files to the Bureau’s director. Things were about to be taken to a new level, files were about to be scrutinized, and investigations were soon to follow. And, for the FBI, that’s pretty much how it all began. mysteriousuniverse.org/2019/04/cattle-mutilations-how-the-fbi-got-involved/
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Post by auntym on May 10, 2023 0:50:56 GMT -6
www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/the-enduring-panic-about-cow-mutilationsLetter from the Southwest The Enduring Panic About Cow MutilationsAliens, the government, or unspecified shadowy forces—another round of “mutes” incites familiar fears.
By Rachel Monroe / www.newyorker.com/contributors/rachel-monroeMay 8, 2023 Illustration by Nicholas Konrad / The New Yorker; Source photographs by Getty. On April 19th, the Madison County Sheriff’s Office published a Facebook post about “the death and mutilation” of six cows. It was an unusual story for the farming community, a hundred miles north of Houston, where police reports tend more toward traffic violations and stray livestock. The news travelled quickly, racking up seventeen thousand shares on Facebook; within a week it had gone international. Much of the coverage lingered on the unnerving details highlighted in the Facebook post: that the cows, found in six locations, had their tongues and part of the flesh of their cheeks precisely excised, with no apparent signs of struggle. “No predators or birds would scavenge the remains for several weeks after death,” the sheriff’s department wrote. A seventh cow was discovered soon afterward, in a similar condition. Alarmed Facebook commenters variously blamed “some cult,” “satanic rituals,” “chupacabras,” “a serial killer in the making,” and “aliens.” The cow story piqued the interest of Chuck Zukowski, a longtime paranormal investigator. Zukowski, who is based in Colorado Springs, specializes in mutilation cases, or, as he calls them, mutes. The tongues being gone is “a signature,” he told me. Although he has found reports of what seem like mute cases dating back to 1869, it wasn’t until the nineteen-seventies, when the nation was seized by a cow-mutilation panic, that the phenomenon cohered into its most well-known form: cows drained of blood, their body parts—typically eyes, tongues, cheeks, and sex organs—removed with “surgical precision.” Some reported mutilations are accompanied by other strange and seemingly inexplicable signs: circular depressions in the surrounding grass; animals with broken legs, as if they’ve been dropped from great heights; predators that keep away from the carcass, perhaps sensing that something is amiss. Zukowski keeps several go bags on hand so that, when he receives a report of something mysterious, he can get out the door as quickly as possible. His kit for animal mutilations includes an electromagnetic-field meter, a Geiger counter, a motion-sensing camera, a night-vision lens, jars of formaldehyde (for biological samples), and a P100 Nikon with a three-thousand-millimetre zoom optic. “It’s designed for bird watching, but it’s great for U.F.O.s,” he noted. Zukowski is an engineer by training, and in his decades of mute investigations, he said, he’s encountered phenomena he cannot scientifically explain, such as high E.M.F. readings and atomic changes in the nearby soil. He believes that a high-energy source, possibly of extraterrestrial origin, is responsible, although he knows that some people will find the suggestion ridiculous. “We have what they call the giggle factor. And the giggle factor is when other people basically make fun,” he said. “But that’s changed a lot, now that the Pentagon is involved in doing U.F.O. investigations.” After the news of the Texas mutes spread widely, Madison County’s law enforcement provided few additional details. “They’re keeping some of the details close to the chest, understandably,” another paranormal investigator told me. Zukowski, who used to work in law enforcement, told me that he’d managed to contact a deputy who’d investigated the Madison County cows, and he’d shared with her his photographs of a previous mutilation in Oregon. According to Zukowski, she agreed that the images looked similar. (I left several messages for the Madison County Sheriff’s Department, but no one replied.) Zukowski couldn’t travel to Texas for a forensic investigation; he and his wife were about to embark on a Mediterranean cruise to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Even so, he was on high alert. “These things tend to happen in waves,” he told me. In the seventies, mutilated cows began to be reported across the country—a couple of dozen in Minnesota, more than a hundred in Colorado, and others in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and elsewhere. Midway through the decade, newspapers began to repeat the questionably sourced statistic of ten thousand total mutilations. By 1975, the Colorado Associated Press reportedly voted the mutilations the No. 1 story in the state. Nowadays, reports of cattle mutilation are often linked to speculation about extraterrestrial activity, but, in the seventies, many people believed that sinister government forces were to blame. Farmers and ranchers reported seeing unmarked helicopters hovering over fields near mutilation sites. Some claimed that the aircraft had chased them, or even fired at them. The paranoia had a contagious quality; ranchers formed vigilante groups, tracked helicopter sightings, and stopped out-of-state vehicles to search them for evidence. It seemed possible that the panic could tip into something worse. “Now it appears that ranchers are arming themselves to protect their livestock, as well as their families and themselves,” the Colorado senator Floyd Haskell wrote to the F.B.I., pleading for the agency to open an investigation. “Clearly something must be done before someone gets hurt.” One farmer shot a utility helicopter that was inspecting power lines. The Bureau of Land Management temporarily stopped doing aerial land surveys in eastern Colorado, and the Nebraska National Guard ordered pilots to fly helicopters a thousand feet higher than usual. (Ranchers’ suspicions that some cows were the victims of secret biological-weapons tests were not as far-fetched as they sounded. In March, 1968, thousands of sheep convulsed and collapsed near Utah’s Dugway Proving Ground, a U.S. Army facility established to test chemical and biological weapons. Ultimately, six thousand animals died. The Army never fully acknowledged its responsibility for the incident until, decades later, a reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune uncovered a declassified internal report admitting that there was “incontrovertible” evidence that a nerve agent had caused the deaths.) Because it was unclear exactly what was happening to the cows, it was also unclear who could help. The F.B.I. ultimately denied Senator Haskell’s request to investigate, concluding that the agency did not have jurisdiction. To some people, this confirmed that the Feds were in on the conspiracy. Oklahoma convened a special task force, and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation ran undercover operations; both failed to identify a human culprit. The New Mexico Livestock Board asked the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory for help, and investigators in Minnesota spent some time chasing down leads from two prisoners who blamed the mutilations on a “Hell-oriented” biker cult bent on blood sacrifice. (The prisoner tipsters claimed fear of retaliation and requested transfers to smaller facilities, from which both ended up escaping.) In 1979, New Mexico convened a multistate livestock-mutilation conference and hired the retired F.B.I. agent Kenneth Rommel to lead an inquiry, called Operation Animal Mutilation. Rommel spent a year looking into reported mutilations in northern New Mexico. After studying dozens of cases, he concluded that the supposed mutilations could be explained by scavenger activity. Some of the animals poisoned themselves by eating larkspur, or succumbed to common livestock diseases such as blackleg. After death, predators consumed their soft tissue—cheeks, tongues, genitals—first. In a photograph, or from a distance, postmortem predation could look ominously precise; up close and in person, though, Rommel said that he could see tooth marks. Blood hadn’t been drained from the animals; it had merely pooled and coagulated in their lower extremities. Partway through his investigation, Rommel was called to a ranch to examine another reported mutilation. When he found the dead cow in a field near a stream, there were maggots munching on one of its eyeballs, and “the normal odor of decay” hung in the air. In the report he wrote later, Rommel’s exasperation is apparent: After examining the carcass and noting the jagged and torn appearance of the injuries, I asked the owner whether he really thought the damaged areas could be described by the term “surgical precision.” He replied that the damage did appear “a bit rough.” I then asked where he obtained the term “surgical precision,” and he said it was commonly used in the newspapers. The Rommel report paints the mutilations as a kind of pre-Internet meme, a contagious story that shaped how ranchers saw and interpreted dead cows. But why were they so quick to assume a conspiracy? The historian Michael Goleman has noted that the mutilation panic of the seventies happened at a time when cattle ranchers had plenty of reasons to resent the federal government. In New Mexico, most of the mutilations weren’t reported in the regions with the most livestock but, rather, in those where farmers had battled with the B.L.M. about grazing rights. (In recent years, a number of mutilation reports have come out of eastern Oregon, not far from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a portion of which an armed anti-government group led by Ammon Bundy occupied, in 2016.) Goleman also links the mute panic to a broader crisis in the cattle industry. In 1973, as inflation soared, President Richard Nixon announced a temporary price freeze on the wholesale and retail cost of beef. The freeze was catastrophic for many small cattle farmers; in the industry, this period was known as the wreck. Goleman argues that the mutilation panic was fuelled by anxiety about these federal interventions, fears that were recast as more visceral, immediate terrors: a hovering helicopter, a cow bled dry, a farmer left helpless and confused. In 1980, the Denver television journalist Linda Moulton Howe produced “Strange Harvest,” a documentary about the mutilations. Howe had been part of a team that won a Peabody, and she specialized in films about environmental issues: contaminated drinking water, polluted air. In “Strange Harvest,” she suggested that the culprits behind the cattle mutilations weren’t satanists or government agents but extraterrestrial beings. The theory soon gained popularity over the emphasis on governmental villains. As the so-called wreck subsided, so did the widespread stories of mutilations, although intermittent reports still popped up from time to time. But, recently, there has been renewed interest. Last year, Tucker Carlson devoted one of his Fox Nation “Tucker Carlson Originals” to the phenomenon. His special claimed that there were “tens of thousands” of animals, and considered several possible culprits—cults, aliens, the government—without committing to any of them. Naming the source of danger seemed to matter less than stoking a general sense of dread. It was the kind of story Carlson was so good at milking, full of ambient threat, vaguely implied coverups, and shadowy, malevolent forces preying on rural Americans. When Fox News covered the Madison County mutilations, it declared that the cows had been “murdered.” A week after the Texas mutilation news broke, Zukowski e-mailed me. “Just got off the phone with another investigator, there may be another mutilation, this time in Oklahoma,” he wrote. When I spoke to him the next day, he sounded more subdued. “I was able to talk to a deputy on the scene, and in his opinion the animal was not killed abnormally,” he said. “You know, the lower part of the jaw was pulled off, like by a large coyote or something.” Nevertheless, the witness was adamant that it was a mutilation. Zukowski had seen this phenomenon before. When a mutilation story got big, other people would start making similar reports, and many of them wouldn’t pan out. He didn’t know if they were after attention or money or some strange version of validation. “That’s what I think happened here,” he said. “This person was so into hoping it was a mutilation.” ♦ www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/the-enduring-panic-about-cow-mutilations
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