In the month where Halloween is supposed to give us the heebie jeebies, there’s another unexplained, macabre story that’s surfaced after being somewhat buried over the past 45 years — cattle mutilations.
This is weird stuff, and this isn’t the column you want to read while eating your morning cereal.
Back in the mid-1970s, Wisconsin was one of 18 states in which the FBI was involved in investigations into a series of incidents of cattle mutilation.
The scenes where dead cattle were found were usually bloodless, with certain organs (mostly tongues and udders) removed from the animals with surgical-like precision.
Newspapers across America published accounts of cattle mutilations in the 1970s — from a couple who witnessed a green UFO and two aliens with a dead cow in Missouri to what was considered the “bizarre” mutilation of thousands of cows, horses and other grazing animals across the middle of the nation.
The FBI produced a 32-page report on the subject. It contained letters, press clippings, a report to the FBI laboratory, memoranda and other documents.
There were no conclusions offered as to why these harmless animals were found with organs missing and drained of blood.
Chuck Zukowski, who last year hosted the show “Alien Highway” on the Travel Channel, said Wisconsin, being a rural state, has a history of reported cattle and cow mutilations. Zukowski has appeared on numerous science-based television shows that try to describe this phenomena such as the Discovery Channel, Science Channel and ABC Primetime. Zukowski is known as the “Deputy Director of Animal Mutilation Investigations for the Mutual UFO Network,” according to his online biography.
Zukowski was contacted by a Wisconsin farmer in September of 2016 who found an 1,100-pound Holstein cow that had been mutilated with no signs of the cause of death or blood loss. Within two weeks the farmer lost five animals this way, according to Zukowski.
In seven out of 10 cases where cattle mutilations occur, farmers report having seen a “ball of light” either on the day of the event or in the days before or after the event. This occurred with the 2016 Wisconsin case, Zukowski said.
“We know that since 1967 there have been approximately 10,000 of these cases reported in the United States,” Zukowski said. “And this is just what’s reported or what law enforcement brings forward. We know people are afraid to talk about these incidents. Frankly, it scares the hell out of them.”
While the cattle mutilations in the 1970s received the most press, the incidents continue to occur, and Zukowski investigates them regularly.
In remote eastern Oregon earlier this summer, five young purebred bulls were found dead. These animals, which had been well-cared for prior to their demise, were found drained of blood with some of their organs surgically removed.
Anna King, covering the story which was broadcast on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” reported going to the scene where one of the bulls had been killed and said it looked “like a giant, deflated plush toy,” with his its coat “as shiny as if he were going to the fair.”
In King’s story, she talked to Harney County Sheriff’s Deputy Dan Jenkins, who admitted a lot of local people who knew about the incident “lean toward the aliens” as being the cause. The most recently reported cases of cattle mutilation reported in Oregon have ended with no suspects or solid leads. A $25,000 reward for more information has been offered by an Oregon ranch.
Zukowski said researchers of the cattle mutilation phenomena “got lucky” the Oregon story went international. Three cases he investigated in Oregon last year didn’t receive any news coverage, local or otherwise.
The Daily Mail of the United Kingdom printed a fairly comprehensive look into the 1970s coverage of cattle mutilations, written by Anna Hopkins and published in 2017. The story gleaned bits and pieces from cattle mutilation stories throughout the United States.
The thought at that time was quizzical. Christopher O’Brien, an author and scientist, who had studied animal mutilation cases for decades, put the question bluntly.
“It sounds like bad science fiction,” O’Brien told Hopkins. “Who would fly hundreds of light years to come and gather cow butts?”
Zukowski is less sensational. He said above all, it’s one of the largest cases of animal cruelty in the United States.
“It’s kind of scary there are all these strange animal deaths and we can’t find the cause,” Zukowski said. “And the animals left behind are just like fiberglass models of themselves. There’s no sign of human involvement, predators or wounds that would cause the deaths. It’s unexplained.”
— Matt Johnson is publisher of the Monroe Times. His column is published Wednesdays.
