Cattle Mutilations: A More Balanced Perspective.
by George Wingfield
Last week a friend here in Iowa told me that back in the 1970s there were four cattle mutilations which occurred on farms near Cedar Rapids. Most people were mystified but soon afterwards a local man who had once worked for the CIA revealed in confidence what he said he had been told about the killing of these cattle.
In 1973 major defense contractor Rockwell International purchased the Collins Radio company and Rockwell Collins was established with its headquarters and research division in a highly secure building in Cedar Rapids. Multimillion $ government defense contracts with the company were said to be in the field of advanced electronics, communications, avionics and electronic weaponry. Apparently one of the latter systems was some kind of a laser gun and this was what had been tested at night on those unfortunate cows –presumably without the farmers’ knowledge or consent.
Like so much of the US cattle mutilation mystery back in the 1970s and 1980s there is no way of confirming whether or not these Iowan cattle were killed as a result of secret weapons tests, carried out with or without the authorization of whatever government department was responsible for this program. The story does however suggest yet another possible reason for at least some of the unexplained cattle killings of that era.
A further explanation for some of these unexplained killings all over the country may well be the criminal shooting of cattle by men or boys with guns. A young man with a gun, whether he’s a kid with access to a hunting rifle or a rookie soldier with his first issue M16, will soon think about using the gun to kill. Hopefully such use will be confined to licensed shooting of deer or, in the case of the soldier, to shooting at targets on a rifle range but often that’s not going to be enough. A gang member in a big city might use his gun for a drive-by shooting of some random person on the street. Out in the country it’s more likely that a kid with a hunting rifle will secretly try it out on an unfortunate cow in a remote pasture. That’s a criminal act but far better that than him shooting his classmates or teachers at the High School.
Likewise a soldier with a gun who is on an exercise out in the wilds, or maybe a survival course in the desert, will sometimes use it wantonly, or otherwise, but just for the sake of using it. Again, cattle make easy targets that are pretty difficult to miss. It’s an awful thought but could the proliferation of unexplained cattle deaths and mutilations in the missile fields spread over a hundred miles around Malmstrom AFB near Great Falls, MT, be because there were armed military security personnel moving about with their guns in these remote areas? I don’t think there’s any record of mutilations in this area before the Minuteman missile silos and the military personnel needed to guard them arrived there in the 1960s and 1970s. An alternative explanation for the many mutilations in the Malmstrom missile fields is that military personnel engaged in secret cattle sampling programs (see Cause of Death (6) below) may well have found it convenient to make use of the secure fenced areas surrounding each silo to do their work.
Cousins of mine who once had a large cattle ranch way out in the desert at Bloody Basin in central Arizona sometimes saw military personnel who had been dropped into the desert on training exercises or survival courses. On one occasion two such scary-looking men dressed in battle fatigues and carrying guns called at the ranch house asking for water and for directions. It was on that day my cousins’ pet piglet ‘Ham’ vanished, never to be seen again. I don’t think anyone had much doubt about what happened to Ham. No one suggested the pig was abducted by aliens in a UFO or that he was the victim of Satanists –there was a far easier explanation! There were also some cattle deaths with mutilations near the ranch back then but this was put down to a predator which seems to have been a mountain lion.
All this shows that there can be several different causes of the unexplained cattle deaths which occur all over the United States and without an autopsy of the dead beast it’s often difficult to establish the actual cause of death. Most ranchers are unwilling to pay the high price that veterinarians would charge for such bovine autopsies. In general a carcass that has lain out in the desert or in pastures for any length of time will show mutilations and here in the Midwest I would be surprised if there wasn’t any sign of mutilation.
The reason cattle mutilations are regarded as such a mystery is because the cause of death is often not obvious and also because of the false assumption that whatever killed the wretched beast must have also mutilated it. In very many cases this is simply not true and mutilation of the dead animal is done later by avian scavengers. The chief culprits are turkey vultures and/or black vultures, often with several attacking a carcass at the same time.
A turkey vulture, which has a six-foot wingspan, is shown at left. A news item describing the killing and mutilation of calves in Mississippi by vultures is appended at the end of this article. There can be little doubt that vultures are the chief culprit when it comes to mutilations.
Again and again I’ve read reports of cattle mutilations written by some “experts” that say there were no footprints or tire tracks anywhere near the mutilated carcass. Therefore, they say, the mutilation COULD NOT POSSIBLY have been done by predators or scavengers and it MUST have been the work of aliens from above in UFOs –or perhaps even MIBs in black helicopters. Well, duh! I guess some “experts” have never heard of avian scavengers and some seem blissfully unaware of the existence of the vultures --which we country folk in the Midwest see soaring overhead nearly every single day.
Generally these large birds –sometimes 3 or 4 or more—perch on a carcass to peck away at the soft tissue of the bovine corpse. They leave no marks on the ground but any sharp-sighted investigator may sometimes see birdpoop and perhaps a few dark feathers left behind.
Let us now look at six fallacies which have caused much confusion when it comes to understanding the cattle mutilation mystery:
Six Fallacies that one hears from Cattle Mutilation Conspiracy Theorists who wish to maintain that Aliens, MIBs, (or maybe Satanists) are to blame.
1. The assumption that whatever killed the animal also mutilated it. Obviously that is sometimes the case, but often a dead animal is mutilated after its death by scavengers and NOT by whatever agency killed the beast. Scavengers usually find a carcass soon after an animal’s death.
2. The assumption that an animal killed by predators such as coyotes would always be ripped open and eaten, often with spillage of blood on the ground. Several coyotes which have killed a calf --or other mammal of similar size-- will often leave the carcass and return to it later. People who think otherwise may have been watching too many wildlife documentaries on TV where lions in Africa kill zebra or wildebeest and then rip the body apart feasting on it at once.
3. The false suggestion that the only scavengers which could cause the mutilations are animals like coyotes, raccoons, foxes, opossums, and also insects and maggots. Mention of avian scavengers is very often ignored.
By far the greatest numbers of cattle mutilations are carried out by turkey vultures –“buzzards”-- and also to a lesser extent by black vultures, crows, ravens and other birds. Up to, say, ten vultures at a time will feast on a cow’s carcass invariably starting with accessible soft tissue such as the eyes, the anus, the genitalia, the tongue, and mouth parts. If a carcass is left out in the open for any length of time after death such mutilations will almost certainly occur and the chief culprits will be vultures. Here in the Midwest it would be most surprising if a carcass in the open were left unmutilated.
4. The assertion that the body of the killed animal had been completely drained of blood. Unless a qualified veterinarian confirmed this, it seems far more likely that the blood had congealed and lost its fluidity inside the carcass. This normally happens within hours of an animal dying or being killed. The argument that it can’t be predators which killed the beast because there’s no blood on the ground simply isn’t true. Unless predators like lions ripped the animal open while its heart was still pumping, there will be little blood spilled on the ground. Other cattle deaths such as those caused by disease, heart failure, lightning strike, even by a rifle shot, will typically produce little if any exsanguination.
5. The frequent assertion that incisions on carcasses of some mutilated cattle were “surgical” and/or “as if cut using a very sharp blade or laser”. This CAN certainly apply in some cases of cattle mutilation, but very often incisions do appear as straight or smoothly curved edges because the skin has been stretched by bloating of the animal’s body. Bloating often occurs when a carcass has been lying out in the hot sun for any length of time.
6. There have been assumptions by some researchers that the unexplained cattle deaths and mutilations are mainly caused by one particular culprit, such as aliens in UFOs. Other researchers will insist on secret government or military personnel flying in “black helicopters” and others on Satanists. From the varied reports in a book like Christopher O’Brien’s Stalking the Herd (2014) it becomes evident that a number of culprits are responsible for the killings. It’s hard to say which of the suspected killers are most to blame. The mix, represented as a pie chart, may vary with time and place but most of the mutilation characteristics have remained similar over the years.
Here is a list of some suggested causes of unexplained cattle deaths in the US over the last 40 years. The first three are probably the most likely causes but the others may well account for some fraction of the mystery.
(1) Natural causes including disease, heart failure, pneumonia, congenital abnormality, etc. An autopsy might reveal these as causes of death.
(2) Attacks by predators such as coyotes. These are much more likely to kill calves or sickly animals rather than adult cattle. A group of coyotes may single out one weaker animal from the herd and kill it by repeated biting or by shock. Black vultures also make predatory attacks on calves pecking out their eyes and sending the animals into shock that causes death.
(3) Criminal shooting of cattle by delinquents –possibly frustrated hunters or teenagers. A high-velocity rifle bullet might pass right through a cow leaving minimal signs of entry or exit wounds. Such shootings could also be done by military personnel who want to try out their rifles when there aren’t any witnesses about. Dead cows tell no tales!
(4) Poisoning. Ergot poisoning has been mentioned and deliberate poisoning by person or persons unknown might be a possibility. Botulism caused by the bacterium Clostridium Botulinum is possible too.
(5) Covert testing of newly developed weapons by military units operating under cover of darkness. This might involve use of unmarked helicopters and the weapons could be guns or laser devices. It has also been suggested that nerve gas or germ warfare agents could have been secretly tested on selected animals. This was the thesis of the 1982 B-movie Endangered Species. If this testing ever did go on, tissue samples would probably have been taken from the dead animals which might account for some unusual mutilations.
(6) A secret sampling program, by whatever government agency, to check for such things as radioactive fallout from nuclear tests in Nevada, chemical warfare toxins that could have drifted from places such as Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, etc., detection of mad cow disease prions in cattle which is something that could have proved disastrous for the US beef industry. Such sampling would probably involve shooting marked cattle from, say, a stealth helicopter and surgically removing tissue and/or organs for testing which might result in very distinctive mutilations of the carcass. (Regarding this last possibility, see Colm Kelleher’s 2004 book: ‘Brain Trust: The Hidden Connection between Mad Cow and Misdiagnosed Alzheimer’s Disease’.)
(7) Satanic ritual killings. A possibility, but unlikely since there really aren’t that many active Satanic cults in this country despite what’s claimed in the folklore that one sometimes reads. How many Satanists do you know?
(8) Lightning strikes or electrocution due to faulty power lines or utility poles. This has occasionally been reported in some countries such as the UK.
(9) Death due to collision impact, either with other cattle during a stampede or with a tree or fence pole.
(10) Death due to being dropped from a height. This presupposes the animal has been taken up into the air and then dropped which could be the case if tornadoes were reported in the area. Otherwise we would have to assume the animal was first winched up by a “black helicopter” in order to have some excision or mutilation performed on it (see (6) above) and then dumped again. Possible but unlikely.
(11) The animals may have died of fright or the shock caused by low flying military aircraft, violent thunderstorms, large size hail, etc. Sudden stress can have such an effect on bovines but there is little reason to think that many cattle perish in this manner.
(12) Death inflicted by aliens in UFOs (and/or flying saucers) who are said to remove bovine tissue for genetic experimentation or other unknown purposes to do with the survival of their species. This suggestion has been rejected and even ridiculed by almost everyone who has seriously looked at the cattle mutilation mystery. The only supporting evidence for it comes from a few supposed alien abductees who have made such claims as a result of hypnotic regression therapy performed on them by believers in the alien solution. Cattle mutilations by aliens has become such a central strand in modern “ET-UFO Alien” myth now that many in the UFO community accept it like an article of faith and unquestioning articles are published in the MUFON UFO Journal without any mention of the part that vultures play.
----
Out of all these possible causes of unexplained cattle deaths only (5), (6), (7) and (12) envision the possibility that humans (or aliens) performed surgical incisions on the cadavers of the animals when they were killed. If the actual mutilations are mainly due to avian scavengers --such as vultures—those distinctive injuries would usually be inflicted on any carcass out in the open that had been killed as a result of any of causes (1) through (12) above. No matter that there could already be incisions and/or organ removal from the carcass --made by whatever agency killed the beast-- scavenging vultures would soon be along to add their own mutilations.
Below is an artist’s impression of cows being taken up into a flying saucer for mutilation purposes by the aliens as suggested in (12) above. I think this explanation of the mutilation phenomenon --along the lines suggested by its chief proponent Linda Moulton Howe—now strikes most people as pure fantasy and something that has just about zero evidence to support it.
[SNIP]
During the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, when a lot of covert government/military activity went on, a substantial fraction of the mix may have been accounted for by categories (5) and/or (6) and these killings may well have involved use of unidentified helicopters. Today most of the unexplained cattle deaths, corresponding to the larger sectors of the pie, A, B, and C, are likely to have been caused by either (1), (2), or (3). I’ll leave you all to decide just how the pie chart should be divided.
George Wingfield
Ottumwa, Iowa
May 2014
Vultures behind cattle mutilation
Posted May 26, 2013 9.42 a.m. (The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, TN) see:- Vultures behind cattle mutilation » The Commercial Appeal [ Progress is near Hattiesburg, MS ]
PROGRESS, Miss. (AP) — Nancy Hall says it took a while but she and her husband John have found what has been attacking the calves at their dairy farm — vultures.
Nancy Hall tells the Enterprise-Journal (Vultures behind cattle mutilation - enterprise-journal.com: News) that the attacks had been going for several days at her farm in the Progress community.
She said some of her calves' eyes, tongue and other parts of their bodies were pecked out. The couple called Lee Barkdull with the Mississippi Department of Agriculture. Barkdull said a predator — a coyote or other animal — had done the damage, but he wasn't sure. The couple thought someone was playing cruel games. "We really thought it was somebody," Nancy said.
One day, Nancy said they saw the culprit: an American black vulture. The bird is known to attack vulnerable, small animals including newborn calves. The birds pick at the eyes, tongue and other parts of the animal to send it into shock and eventually kill it. The vultures are the size of the turkey vulture*. The black vulture has a black head and black feathers with white accents under the wings. The birds are protected under state and federal laws.
"It is in the early morning when we have seen them out here," John said. "But you can expect them any time. They don't circle above like the old buzzards do; they sit out there in the trees and sweep in like a predator," he said.
Nancy said the birds have killed three female calves, which can fetch up to $300, and a male calf. She also said they have three more calves missing but aren't sure what happened to them.
The Halls found a way to keep the birds from attacking the small calves. They keep the animals in a smaller pen so the birds can't get to them.
"If they get down in there they can't get their wings out to fly out," John said.
Nancy said the birds won't mass attack the bigger cows ranging in age from 4 months to adult. Once the calves get old enough, they release them into a bigger enclosure, she said.
_______________________________________________________________
* that’s not quite true. Turkey vultures (“buzzards”) have a six foot wingspan whereas the smaller black vultures are only 4 ft 6 in. However black vultures are more aggressive than turkey vultures and will drive the latter from a carcass. I know of no reported case of turkey vultures actually killing calves but it is possible they sometimes do. There are huge numbers of them all over the US whereas the black vulture is somewhat rarer and is found mainly in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Florida –not so much in the Midwest, New Mexico or Colorado. This story means that black vultures can be classified as predators as well as scavengers, but we believe that turkey vultures are principally scavengers --GW.
by George Wingfield
Last week a friend here in Iowa told me that back in the 1970s there were four cattle mutilations which occurred on farms near Cedar Rapids. Most people were mystified but soon afterwards a local man who had once worked for the CIA revealed in confidence what he said he had been told about the killing of these cattle.
In 1973 major defense contractor Rockwell International purchased the Collins Radio company and Rockwell Collins was established with its headquarters and research division in a highly secure building in Cedar Rapids. Multimillion $ government defense contracts with the company were said to be in the field of advanced electronics, communications, avionics and electronic weaponry. Apparently one of the latter systems was some kind of a laser gun and this was what had been tested at night on those unfortunate cows –presumably without the farmers’ knowledge or consent.
Like so much of the US cattle mutilation mystery back in the 1970s and 1980s there is no way of confirming whether or not these Iowan cattle were killed as a result of secret weapons tests, carried out with or without the authorization of whatever government department was responsible for this program. The story does however suggest yet another possible reason for at least some of the unexplained cattle killings of that era.
A further explanation for some of these unexplained killings all over the country may well be the criminal shooting of cattle by men or boys with guns. A young man with a gun, whether he’s a kid with access to a hunting rifle or a rookie soldier with his first issue M16, will soon think about using the gun to kill. Hopefully such use will be confined to licensed shooting of deer or, in the case of the soldier, to shooting at targets on a rifle range but often that’s not going to be enough. A gang member in a big city might use his gun for a drive-by shooting of some random person on the street. Out in the country it’s more likely that a kid with a hunting rifle will secretly try it out on an unfortunate cow in a remote pasture. That’s a criminal act but far better that than him shooting his classmates or teachers at the High School.
Likewise a soldier with a gun who is on an exercise out in the wilds, or maybe a survival course in the desert, will sometimes use it wantonly, or otherwise, but just for the sake of using it. Again, cattle make easy targets that are pretty difficult to miss. It’s an awful thought but could the proliferation of unexplained cattle deaths and mutilations in the missile fields spread over a hundred miles around Malmstrom AFB near Great Falls, MT, be because there were armed military security personnel moving about with their guns in these remote areas? I don’t think there’s any record of mutilations in this area before the Minuteman missile silos and the military personnel needed to guard them arrived there in the 1960s and 1970s. An alternative explanation for the many mutilations in the Malmstrom missile fields is that military personnel engaged in secret cattle sampling programs (see Cause of Death (6) below) may well have found it convenient to make use of the secure fenced areas surrounding each silo to do their work.
Cousins of mine who once had a large cattle ranch way out in the desert at Bloody Basin in central Arizona sometimes saw military personnel who had been dropped into the desert on training exercises or survival courses. On one occasion two such scary-looking men dressed in battle fatigues and carrying guns called at the ranch house asking for water and for directions. It was on that day my cousins’ pet piglet ‘Ham’ vanished, never to be seen again. I don’t think anyone had much doubt about what happened to Ham. No one suggested the pig was abducted by aliens in a UFO or that he was the victim of Satanists –there was a far easier explanation! There were also some cattle deaths with mutilations near the ranch back then but this was put down to a predator which seems to have been a mountain lion.
All this shows that there can be several different causes of the unexplained cattle deaths which occur all over the United States and without an autopsy of the dead beast it’s often difficult to establish the actual cause of death. Most ranchers are unwilling to pay the high price that veterinarians would charge for such bovine autopsies. In general a carcass that has lain out in the desert or in pastures for any length of time will show mutilations and here in the Midwest I would be surprised if there wasn’t any sign of mutilation.
The reason cattle mutilations are regarded as such a mystery is because the cause of death is often not obvious and also because of the false assumption that whatever killed the wretched beast must have also mutilated it. In very many cases this is simply not true and mutilation of the dead animal is done later by avian scavengers. The chief culprits are turkey vultures and/or black vultures, often with several attacking a carcass at the same time.
A turkey vulture, which has a six-foot wingspan, is shown at left. A news item describing the killing and mutilation of calves in Mississippi by vultures is appended at the end of this article. There can be little doubt that vultures are the chief culprit when it comes to mutilations.
Again and again I’ve read reports of cattle mutilations written by some “experts” that say there were no footprints or tire tracks anywhere near the mutilated carcass. Therefore, they say, the mutilation COULD NOT POSSIBLY have been done by predators or scavengers and it MUST have been the work of aliens from above in UFOs –or perhaps even MIBs in black helicopters. Well, duh! I guess some “experts” have never heard of avian scavengers and some seem blissfully unaware of the existence of the vultures --which we country folk in the Midwest see soaring overhead nearly every single day.
Generally these large birds –sometimes 3 or 4 or more—perch on a carcass to peck away at the soft tissue of the bovine corpse. They leave no marks on the ground but any sharp-sighted investigator may sometimes see birdpoop and perhaps a few dark feathers left behind.
Let us now look at six fallacies which have caused much confusion when it comes to understanding the cattle mutilation mystery:
Six Fallacies that one hears from Cattle Mutilation Conspiracy Theorists who wish to maintain that Aliens, MIBs, (or maybe Satanists) are to blame.
1. The assumption that whatever killed the animal also mutilated it. Obviously that is sometimes the case, but often a dead animal is mutilated after its death by scavengers and NOT by whatever agency killed the beast. Scavengers usually find a carcass soon after an animal’s death.
2. The assumption that an animal killed by predators such as coyotes would always be ripped open and eaten, often with spillage of blood on the ground. Several coyotes which have killed a calf --or other mammal of similar size-- will often leave the carcass and return to it later. People who think otherwise may have been watching too many wildlife documentaries on TV where lions in Africa kill zebra or wildebeest and then rip the body apart feasting on it at once.
3. The false suggestion that the only scavengers which could cause the mutilations are animals like coyotes, raccoons, foxes, opossums, and also insects and maggots. Mention of avian scavengers is very often ignored.
By far the greatest numbers of cattle mutilations are carried out by turkey vultures –“buzzards”-- and also to a lesser extent by black vultures, crows, ravens and other birds. Up to, say, ten vultures at a time will feast on a cow’s carcass invariably starting with accessible soft tissue such as the eyes, the anus, the genitalia, the tongue, and mouth parts. If a carcass is left out in the open for any length of time after death such mutilations will almost certainly occur and the chief culprits will be vultures. Here in the Midwest it would be most surprising if a carcass in the open were left unmutilated.
4. The assertion that the body of the killed animal had been completely drained of blood. Unless a qualified veterinarian confirmed this, it seems far more likely that the blood had congealed and lost its fluidity inside the carcass. This normally happens within hours of an animal dying or being killed. The argument that it can’t be predators which killed the beast because there’s no blood on the ground simply isn’t true. Unless predators like lions ripped the animal open while its heart was still pumping, there will be little blood spilled on the ground. Other cattle deaths such as those caused by disease, heart failure, lightning strike, even by a rifle shot, will typically produce little if any exsanguination.
5. The frequent assertion that incisions on carcasses of some mutilated cattle were “surgical” and/or “as if cut using a very sharp blade or laser”. This CAN certainly apply in some cases of cattle mutilation, but very often incisions do appear as straight or smoothly curved edges because the skin has been stretched by bloating of the animal’s body. Bloating often occurs when a carcass has been lying out in the hot sun for any length of time.
6. There have been assumptions by some researchers that the unexplained cattle deaths and mutilations are mainly caused by one particular culprit, such as aliens in UFOs. Other researchers will insist on secret government or military personnel flying in “black helicopters” and others on Satanists. From the varied reports in a book like Christopher O’Brien’s Stalking the Herd (2014) it becomes evident that a number of culprits are responsible for the killings. It’s hard to say which of the suspected killers are most to blame. The mix, represented as a pie chart, may vary with time and place but most of the mutilation characteristics have remained similar over the years.
Here is a list of some suggested causes of unexplained cattle deaths in the US over the last 40 years. The first three are probably the most likely causes but the others may well account for some fraction of the mystery.
(1) Natural causes including disease, heart failure, pneumonia, congenital abnormality, etc. An autopsy might reveal these as causes of death.
(2) Attacks by predators such as coyotes. These are much more likely to kill calves or sickly animals rather than adult cattle. A group of coyotes may single out one weaker animal from the herd and kill it by repeated biting or by shock. Black vultures also make predatory attacks on calves pecking out their eyes and sending the animals into shock that causes death.
(3) Criminal shooting of cattle by delinquents –possibly frustrated hunters or teenagers. A high-velocity rifle bullet might pass right through a cow leaving minimal signs of entry or exit wounds. Such shootings could also be done by military personnel who want to try out their rifles when there aren’t any witnesses about. Dead cows tell no tales!
(4) Poisoning. Ergot poisoning has been mentioned and deliberate poisoning by person or persons unknown might be a possibility. Botulism caused by the bacterium Clostridium Botulinum is possible too.
(5) Covert testing of newly developed weapons by military units operating under cover of darkness. This might involve use of unmarked helicopters and the weapons could be guns or laser devices. It has also been suggested that nerve gas or germ warfare agents could have been secretly tested on selected animals. This was the thesis of the 1982 B-movie Endangered Species. If this testing ever did go on, tissue samples would probably have been taken from the dead animals which might account for some unusual mutilations.
(6) A secret sampling program, by whatever government agency, to check for such things as radioactive fallout from nuclear tests in Nevada, chemical warfare toxins that could have drifted from places such as Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, etc., detection of mad cow disease prions in cattle which is something that could have proved disastrous for the US beef industry. Such sampling would probably involve shooting marked cattle from, say, a stealth helicopter and surgically removing tissue and/or organs for testing which might result in very distinctive mutilations of the carcass. (Regarding this last possibility, see Colm Kelleher’s 2004 book: ‘Brain Trust: The Hidden Connection between Mad Cow and Misdiagnosed Alzheimer’s Disease’.)
(7) Satanic ritual killings. A possibility, but unlikely since there really aren’t that many active Satanic cults in this country despite what’s claimed in the folklore that one sometimes reads. How many Satanists do you know?
(8) Lightning strikes or electrocution due to faulty power lines or utility poles. This has occasionally been reported in some countries such as the UK.
(9) Death due to collision impact, either with other cattle during a stampede or with a tree or fence pole.
(10) Death due to being dropped from a height. This presupposes the animal has been taken up into the air and then dropped which could be the case if tornadoes were reported in the area. Otherwise we would have to assume the animal was first winched up by a “black helicopter” in order to have some excision or mutilation performed on it (see (6) above) and then dumped again. Possible but unlikely.
(11) The animals may have died of fright or the shock caused by low flying military aircraft, violent thunderstorms, large size hail, etc. Sudden stress can have such an effect on bovines but there is little reason to think that many cattle perish in this manner.
(12) Death inflicted by aliens in UFOs (and/or flying saucers) who are said to remove bovine tissue for genetic experimentation or other unknown purposes to do with the survival of their species. This suggestion has been rejected and even ridiculed by almost everyone who has seriously looked at the cattle mutilation mystery. The only supporting evidence for it comes from a few supposed alien abductees who have made such claims as a result of hypnotic regression therapy performed on them by believers in the alien solution. Cattle mutilations by aliens has become such a central strand in modern “ET-UFO Alien” myth now that many in the UFO community accept it like an article of faith and unquestioning articles are published in the MUFON UFO Journal without any mention of the part that vultures play.
----
Out of all these possible causes of unexplained cattle deaths only (5), (6), (7) and (12) envision the possibility that humans (or aliens) performed surgical incisions on the cadavers of the animals when they were killed. If the actual mutilations are mainly due to avian scavengers --such as vultures—those distinctive injuries would usually be inflicted on any carcass out in the open that had been killed as a result of any of causes (1) through (12) above. No matter that there could already be incisions and/or organ removal from the carcass --made by whatever agency killed the beast-- scavenging vultures would soon be along to add their own mutilations.
Below is an artist’s impression of cows being taken up into a flying saucer for mutilation purposes by the aliens as suggested in (12) above. I think this explanation of the mutilation phenomenon --along the lines suggested by its chief proponent Linda Moulton Howe—now strikes most people as pure fantasy and something that has just about zero evidence to support it.
[SNIP]
During the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, when a lot of covert government/military activity went on, a substantial fraction of the mix may have been accounted for by categories (5) and/or (6) and these killings may well have involved use of unidentified helicopters. Today most of the unexplained cattle deaths, corresponding to the larger sectors of the pie, A, B, and C, are likely to have been caused by either (1), (2), or (3). I’ll leave you all to decide just how the pie chart should be divided.
George Wingfield
Ottumwa, Iowa
May 2014
Vultures behind cattle mutilation
Posted May 26, 2013 9.42 a.m. (The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, TN) see:- Vultures behind cattle mutilation » The Commercial Appeal [ Progress is near Hattiesburg, MS ]
PROGRESS, Miss. (AP) — Nancy Hall says it took a while but she and her husband John have found what has been attacking the calves at their dairy farm — vultures.
Nancy Hall tells the Enterprise-Journal (Vultures behind cattle mutilation - enterprise-journal.com: News) that the attacks had been going for several days at her farm in the Progress community.
She said some of her calves' eyes, tongue and other parts of their bodies were pecked out. The couple called Lee Barkdull with the Mississippi Department of Agriculture. Barkdull said a predator — a coyote or other animal — had done the damage, but he wasn't sure. The couple thought someone was playing cruel games. "We really thought it was somebody," Nancy said.
One day, Nancy said they saw the culprit: an American black vulture. The bird is known to attack vulnerable, small animals including newborn calves. The birds pick at the eyes, tongue and other parts of the animal to send it into shock and eventually kill it. The vultures are the size of the turkey vulture*. The black vulture has a black head and black feathers with white accents under the wings. The birds are protected under state and federal laws.
"It is in the early morning when we have seen them out here," John said. "But you can expect them any time. They don't circle above like the old buzzards do; they sit out there in the trees and sweep in like a predator," he said.
Nancy said the birds have killed three female calves, which can fetch up to $300, and a male calf. She also said they have three more calves missing but aren't sure what happened to them.
The Halls found a way to keep the birds from attacking the small calves. They keep the animals in a smaller pen so the birds can't get to them.
"If they get down in there they can't get their wings out to fly out," John said.
Nancy said the birds won't mass attack the bigger cows ranging in age from 4 months to adult. Once the calves get old enough, they release them into a bigger enclosure, she said.
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* that’s not quite true. Turkey vultures (“buzzards”) have a six foot wingspan whereas the smaller black vultures are only 4 ft 6 in. However black vultures are more aggressive than turkey vultures and will drive the latter from a carcass. I know of no reported case of turkey vultures actually killing calves but it is possible they sometimes do. There are huge numbers of them all over the US whereas the black vulture is somewhat rarer and is found mainly in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Florida –not so much in the Midwest, New Mexico or Colorado. This story means that black vultures can be classified as predators as well as scavengers, but we believe that turkey vultures are principally scavengers --GW.