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Mysterious cattle mutilations – animals stripped of organs and drained of blood with no signs of struggle – have baffled ranchers and law enforcement across the US for decades. Though these cases gained significant attention in the 1970s – when the Colorado Associated Press called the cattle mutilations the state’s top story – records of similar occurrences date back as far as 1869, according to Chris O’Brien’s book ‘Stalking the Herd: Unraveling the Cattle Mutilation Mystery’.
The phenomenon is not limited to cattle, as other livestock have also occasionally been found under similar circumstances.
Sgt. Jeremiah Holmes of the Wheeler County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon, who has investigated five such cases in six years, described the incidents as deeply unsettling. “There’s more questions in this thing than there are answers,” he told Fox News. Mr Holmes said there would be no tracks or blood, even in fresh snow.
“It’s a felony to kill a farmer’s livestock,” he explained. Yet, no significant leads have ever come up.
Mr Holmes, like many others, has entertained a wide range of theories, from extraterrestrial involvement to government experiments and ritualistic practices. “Some think it’s aliens; some think it’s the government. I don’t know,” he admitted.
A particularly unsettling episode came to light in 2017 when five bulls were found dead within two days. Each animal had been stripped of its reproductive organs and tongues without any evidence of bloodshed.
“There was not a drop of blood,” Colby Marshall, a former ranch manager in Burns, Oregon, Marshall said as per the NY Post. The animals were otherwise untouched, even by scavengers. “I’ve butchered cattle for years and never seen anything like that.”
Despite a $25,000 reward for information, the case remains unsolved. Mr Marshall speculates that a group of humans, possibly cultists, may be responsible, though he remains open to other possibilities.
“I believe there’s a high probability of life elsewhere in the galaxy,” he said. “But do I think aliens are using advanced technology to harvest organs from free-range bulls? No, I don’t. If they are, though, it means we’ve got the best beef in the galaxy.”
The FBI briefly investigated cattle mutilations between 1974 and 1978 but reached no conclusions. Mr Holmes believes modern tools and techniques could provide new insights. “We have so much more technology now. I want this solved,” he said, urging federal authorities to reopen the case.
