Deep Dives Research Contest - Cattle Mutilation

warning: some graphic images in this article

“I must say that the materials sent to me indicate the existence of one of the strangest phenomenons in my memory.” -Griffin B. Bell. Attorney General

As part of the Deep Dives Research Challenge, contestants are tasked with taking a dive into the FBI’s document vault. Now these are just the documents that the government allows you to see. Sure, some of this is reluctant, but anything that seriously jeopardizes the ruling class’ hold on the minds and bodies of the people will be “redacted”.

That said, I wanted to see some of their ‘unexplained phenomenon’, so I decided to research cattle mutilation.

I’ll say outright that I’m a skeptic. I try to follow science and I’m not anti-intellectual. I even considered the concept of cattle mutilation to be something absurd. The idea reminded me of South Park’s take on it.

I’ll try to detail the following.

First, I’ll summarize the FBI archives. Second, I’ll focus more on general feature of cattle mutilations. Last, I’ll critique different 'alternative' explanations for the phenomenon.

When A Senator Asks For Help…

I made the above two graphs. I wanted to find a visual representation of the cattle mutilation phenomenon but couldn't find anything ready made. The source data comes from this website. The data entries in turn often come from a this single book, entitled “A Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies: Primary Access to Observations of UFOs, Ghosts, and Other Mysterious Phenomena”.

I cannot vouch for the veracity of this single book, but assuming it’s true, the graphs at least give us an visual indication of the both the prevalence of reported cattle mutilations by location, as well as the quantity per year. Already there is a descrepancy, as the FBI files detail. (See pg.17 of part ⅕)

Senator Floyd Haskell sent a letter to the director of the FBI on August 29th, 1975. See states that there had been over 130 cases of cattle mutilation reported to officials in the state of Colorado alone. 130 is larger than the data from thecid.com suggests, but it remains in line with what their data shows. Namely that, 1975 was one hell of a year to be a cow, particularly in Colorado.

Senator Haskell was concerned about the fears of his constituents. Farmers and rural folk had begun to get so spooked from the consistent mutilations that they’d begun arming themselves to protect their cattle. Senator Haskell was worried that these fears would lead to someone getting shot and killed. He also stated that cases of cattle mutilation had been reported in 21 different states.

It took time before the FBI began an investigation. The difficulty was determining what, if any, the cases fell into the FBI’s jurisdiction. There were attempts to begin the investigation under the Interstate Transportation of Stolen Cattle Statute but they could not determine that any interstate theft had taken place.

In a letter from R.J. Glover to a “Mr. Adams” (that shit sounds X-Files to me) explaining the above legal difficulties (pg12 on part ⅕), R.J. Glover further details Senator Haskell’s worries about the issue. Haskell told R.J. Glover that he’d gotten a phone call from a new editor in Colorado. Editor Dan Edwards had written about reports of U.S. Army helicopters being seen in the area of cattle mutilations. Dan Edwards told Haskell that he was “threatened”, though to what extent is not made clear.

Much of the FBI files detail either news reports of the mutilations or letters between officials trying to determine how they can begin an investigation.

What’s shocking about this topic is that the mutilations in fact were happening, and that even government officials and the FBI took it seriously enough to try and figure out what the hell was going on. The FBI eventually began their investigation in 1979 under the jurisdiction of Title 18 (Code 1152/1153). The codes refer to crimes committed on Native American territories. Basically, laws broken on Native territory (mutilation of cattle) unless committed by a native towards a native, defaults to general US law (federal jurisdiction). Since there were 15 mutilations on Native territory, they were able able to begin their investigation..

Details of the mutilations

Senator Haskell details the mutilations in his letters with the FBI(pg17). He says that in virtually all the cases, the left ear, left eye, rectum and sexual organs are removed. Additionally, the blood from the animal is drained. No blood is found near the corpse, nor are any footprints.

In a general sense, the cattle are missing distinct parts of their bodies, usually an ear, eye, sexual organs, teats, rectums and blood. No blood is found at the corpse. Nor are there footprints. Some reports indicate the presence of scorch marks. Others state that the corpses show clear surgical precision in the cuts. Still others say that the cattle contained anesthetic drugs.

Official Conclusions

The FBI’s conclusion fell in line with their first assumptions: mainly, the death of cattle were in line with natural causes (pg.1 of part ⅕). Scavangers and carrion eaters feed first on the soft tissues of dead animals. Foxes, opossums, flies, these creatures eat the easiest part of the corpse first: ears, eyes, tongues, rectums, etc.

The FBI’s investigation was seen by much of the public as a waste of taxpayer’s money. After five weeks of investigations, nothing new came to the fold. When one bovine mutilation occured during the investigaiton, only to have no federal agent come and inspect the scene of the crime because it happened on a weekend, one newspaper put it like this:(pg15):

“We must advice our cattle mutilators that the game is played only five days a week - we rest on the weekends.”

The FBI stated that “to date, his (Kenneth Rommel, Special Agent) investigative unit has determined that none of the reported cases has involved what appear to be mutilations by other than common predators”.

Interesting, Kenneth Rommell, while in New Mexico, also collected samples from a suspected mutilation (flakes of some kind) as well as samples from a car, the driver of which alleged he saw a UFO hovering over him. The flakes on the car? The FBI determined them to be paint Lol.

The substance from the cow? No idea. The files in the vault do not identify it.

Other Theories

Source

I’m in agreement with the FBI. I think the mutilations were generally caused by predators. A corresponding hype around them grew into a hysteria, causing people to identify otherwise natural phenomenon with ‘mutilations’. I think people desired to find the phenomenon, and therefore saw what they wanted. They ignored obvious details like footprints or blood and played up the stories. Why? Because they didn’t trust the government and expressed their life’s anxieties through the cattle mutilations.

Plenty of other theories abound.

“The Aliens Did It”

Basically people think aliens started mutilating cows. I have the same disagreements with this that I do with abductee stories. No evidence has ever been found to substantiate these ideas. More than that, logically, an alien race capable of intergalactic travel, able to transcend millions of light years to reach our planet, why would souch a race want to mutilate cows? If they had such advanced technology, couldn’t they just poke a cow with a needle, get its DNA, then clone it?

Why take a hundred million light year trip just to rip apart bovine assholes? It makes no sense.

Source

The Government Did It

Again, why cows?

Cults

This is the most likely scenario, but there’s no evidence for it. What about the lack of blood? Surely, cults harvested it.

Ok. The sun can also degenerate blood, or it can bloat through one side of the corpse during decomposition. It doesn’t have to be drained for it not to be there. There’s natural explanations for this.

But I’ll say, during the hysteria of cattle mutilations, it might be a good time for a cult to go do some sadism.

I say this is the most likely scenario, in that, all this would require are gullible humans capable of sadism. And that’s far more likely than a wasteful and vast government conspiracy to mutilate cow assholes or a alien race with a bovine anal fetish.

A cult replicating pre-civilization esoteric rites about animal mutilations and some make-believe God is far more believable. And such a cult could take advantage of a current hysteria to chop apart a few cows between the other hundred that are dying from predators.

I’ll end with this. The mutilations did happen. There were over a hundred cases in a single state alone. But there’s natural explanations for the majority of the cases. The FBI themselves found no evidence of anything unnatural. Humans are gullible and capable of falling into hysteria simply because they want things to be true. I didn’t expect this topic to reveal any BIG SECRET. But what I will say is why were so many reports happening at one time? Why so many in 1975? Was that all hysteria, or what something else taking advantage of that hysteria.

When the government wants everyone to look one way, what you should be doing is turning the fuck around, trying to catch them hand-in-hand with their dirty secret.

One More Idea

If you want sinister, try this. The mutilations are by a government agency testing at random for Mad Cow Disease, which is in our food supply. But, they don't want people to freak out. So they do the tests in secret.

As The Huffington Post reports:

A more likely answer, he believes, is that the killings are conducted by an unknown agency monitoring the food chain to prevent another outbreak of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy — commonly known as “Mad Cow Disease” — that plagued England in 1996.
Although many of the affected animals were destroyed, their bodies were turned into fertilizer, much of which was shipped around the world. O’Brien said it’s possible the Mad Cow Disease prions weren’t destroyed in the process. He thinks someone is killing and testing selected animals to make sure there isn’t another outbreak