The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current, February 22, 1990, Page 8&9, Image 8

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The Cattle Mutilation
i
Mystery Continues
to Puzzle
Ranchers and
Researchers alike
Courtesy of the Fortesm K« s«-arch Center
This is a close-up of the heifer on the cover showing its mysterious wounds. The eye was taken out and
an IB-inch section of its trachea and esophagus was removed through a six-inch incision in its throat.
By John Payne
Staff Reporter
Perhaps the most troubling
aspect of the UFO contro
versy concerns the bizarre
mutilation of cattle and other live
stock, dating back to at least 1967.
Thousands of body parts re
moved from cows and horses in
the same precise “surgical” manner
have been reported across the
Midwest and West. There have been
scattered reports worldwide.
In 1974, more than 100 cases of
mutilated cattle were reported in
Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas. Be
tween 1973 and 1975 there were
130 mutilations in Colorado alone.
Although the numbers peaked
in the 1970s, mutilation has been
reported over the past 20 years.
Most have happened within days
of UFO sightings.
The mode nearly always is the
same: Eyes removed, sexual or
gans cut off, rectum cored out and
tongue often gone. There rarely is
any trace of blood at the site and
there never are any tracks.
These unexplained deaths have
enraged cattle ranchers and left
sheriff departments in the Midwest
puzzled as to who or what could
be responsible.
One of the more popular theo
ries places the blame on satanic
cults, which mutilate the animals as
part of a ritual. But UFO enthusiasts
like Steve Johnson, assistant direc
tor of the Fortean Research Center
in Lincoln, reject this possibility.
“Let’s suppose for a minute that
we’re all jumping the gun and that
these mutilations can be explained
away in earthly terms, say a cult of
some kind,” Johnson said.
“In the thousands of cases in the
U.S. alone, many occurring in broad
daylight, no one has ever been
caught. Ever. Not once in all these
years."
Other factors tend to dispel the
cult theory. Aside from the lack of
blood at the mutilation sites, the
ruts on the animals have been
described by sheriffs and veteri
narians as looking very “surgical”
in their exactness.
The edge of the incisions are
often charred or singed, causing
people to wonder if a laser was
used in the mutilations.
A second theory speculates about
government testing of military
chemicals on the livestock. Un
marked helicopters often have been
spotted in the mutilation area.
In the late 70s, ranchers in
Wyoming and Colorado shot at
low-flying aircraft because they were
enraged by the loss of valuable
livestock.
Hut researchers rarely blame the
military for the mutilations. As one
investigator pointed out, “If the
government were conducting some
sort of testing on these animals
they would certainly have the meaas
to do so in a controlled environ
ment, rather than out in a pasture in
the middle of the night."
In addition, identical mutilations
have been reported in remote areas
of the world such as the Canary
Islands, which are near the north
west coast of Africa, and Australia,
making the “government theory”
even more implausible.
Most ranchers aren’t buying law
enforcement’s standard explanation
that natural predators, such as the
coyote, are the culprit.
A 1974 mutilation, reported in
the St. Paul (Minn.) Dispatch, may
have epitomized law enforcement’s
bewilderment at trying to figure
out the situation.
A 400-pound heifer, belonging
to a Kimball, Minn, farmer, was
found mutilated, the article said.
It lay in a “perfect circle of bare
ground in a snow-covered field
with no footprints to be found
anywhere in the vicinity.”
Other instances of mutilated
cows, found in muddy corrals and
damp pastures, have been reported
without any footprints in the area.
The lack of human or predatory
tracks near the cattle has caused
many to believe the cows some
how are beinglifted off the ground
— mutilated -- then lowered back
down to the earth.
Investigators at the Kimball site
found “heavy breakage of tree limbs
far off the ground,”.in the wooded
area around the mutilated cow.
According to UFO researcher
Terrance Mitchell, who investigated
the case, all of the tree limbs had
been broken.
“1 hey were not dead branches,
either-they had been healthy limbs,”
he said.
In 1979, Linda Moulton Howe
was working as an investigative
reporter for a CBS affiliate station in
Denver when she made “A Strange
Harvest,” a documentary about the
mutilations and their possible ex
planation.
In a telephone interview from
Atlanta, Howe said she hasinvesti
f'ated enough mutilation reports
or another documentary and a
follow-up to her 1989 book, “An
Alien Harvest.”
“When you hear about the
number of mutilations, you really
have to double that by at least
two," she said. “So many cases go
unreported because often law en
forcement officials dismiss the idea
that it could have been anything
other that natural predators that
killed these animals.”
The mystery continues.
Less than four months ago, in
the South Central Nebraska coun
ties of Franklin and Webster, two
cases of cattle mutilation were
reported. Both animals had their
sexual organs removed, and the
second cow, belonging to Ivan and
Nora Schukei of Campbell, had a
c
six-inch slit in its throat.
Authorities speculate the heifer
bled profusely from the hole, yet
no blood was visible in the area.
An 18-inch section of the cow’s
trachea and esophagus had some
how been removed, despite that
the missing section on the exterior
of the neck measured only six inches.
A local veterinarian was unable
to pin down the cause of death but
told investigators from the Forlean
Research Center that “if it was a
person that did it, he had very good
surgical skills.”
Franklin County Sheriff Flarry
Schmidt believes the heifer died
from natural causes.
“There were coyote tracks ga
lore,” he said. “It was an old cow
that just couldn’t fend for itself
anymore. But some people want to
make more out of it than it is.”
While Schmidt rejects the notion
that anything unusual happened to
the animal, this isn’t the first strange
incidence he has heard about in
Franklin County.
“A few years back, I heard a
story that would knock your socks
off,” he said. “A local farmer called
us out to his place to look at a large
burned mark in his pasture that he
just knew was made by a flying
saucer. Wecouldn’t figure out what
it was, and so when something like
this (mutilation) happens, people
are inclined to believe anything.”
Assuming there is a connection
between the UFO sightings and the
mutilations, one must ask why
extraterrestrials would be taking
blood and various body parts from
livestock.
Howe has her own theory. She
bases it on testimony from a New
Jersey couple who claim to have
been abducted by an alien space
craft in 1982.
Howe speculates that the aliens
may be on the “back side of a
evolutionary genetic curve,” and
may be “devolving.”
“Their DXA is no longer repli
cating, possibly as the result of
some sort of nuclear catastrophe,
and they need an cn/yme found in
healthy animal and human tissue,”
she said.
Scientists only recently have
discovered the genetic similarities
between humans and cows. Their
many “matching chromosomes”
now make them a better choice for
genetic experimentation than lab
mice.
Howe, who is currently working
on an environmental-awareness
documentary forTurner Broadcast
ing System in Atlanta, saysshecan’t
accept the conventional explana
tions for the mutilations because of
her experience.
“These animals are not being
killed by predators, or by devil
worshipers,” she said. “T hey
are being harvested.” '
Reported cattle mutilations in the United States since
the summer of 1989 - _
Source: Linda Moulton Howe
John Bruca/Dally Nebraskan
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