Low Beef Prices, Ecoterrorists, And Now, Extraterrestrials Source: � Post Register Letters from the West
Running cattle on the western range is getting harder every year. With drought, low prices, wolves, bureaucrats and environmentalists, it's a wonder ranchers can still make a
living.
Then there are the aliens.
Don't laugh. Rancher Jean Barton isn't, anyway.
Barton, of Red Bluff, Calif., is one of hundreds of
ranchers who have found their cattle dead and mutilated over the last 25 years. The phenomenon is a reccurring theme in the new West that logic hasn't been able to totally explain.
Barton's involvement with mutilations began Oct. 16, 1995, when she and her husband, Bill, were checking their 60 head of cattle running on the Lasses National Forest in northern
California.
What they found were two dead cows, with their sex organs cored out. The ears were gone and on one a section of hide
had been peeled away, exposing the teeth and jaw.
``They were so straight and smooth," Barton said of the cuts. ``There was no blood dripping."
Both cows had been in excellent health and had recently calved. When their veterinarian, Richard Meinert, examined the pair, he could find no exact cause of death. Both had lost significant blood but there was none around the carcasses.
He concluded the animals may have been tranquilized and blood-letted after being first ``compromised by weakness."
The Barton case appears to be the classic cattle mutilation. The evidence does not suggest predators. So who or what did it? ``Your guess is as good as mine," Barton said.
In December, rancher Tim Howard lost a pregnant cow to a similar fate 100 miles north in Klamath Falls, Ore. A calf
was found mutilated in Paisley, Ore., in April.
Barton now knows all the stories because she decided to speak out. She knows some people will think she's a kook, but the president of the California Cattle Women thinks
this issue is too important to ignore.
``Livestock publications don't tell ranchers this is going on," she said. ``Most ranchers who have it happen to them don't want to bother with the media."
Cattle mutilations have been attributed to everything from satanic cults to the long-haired hippies down the road. The phenomena started getting attention in the 1970s when a
rash of mutilations all over the West caused law enforcement officials to hold a big conclave in St. Anthony. The governor of Colorado issued a statement decrying the mutilations.
Since then, another cycle of reports erupts about every five or six years. The last one was in eastern Idaho in
1989-90 with more than 30 cases of mutilations reported from Bear Lake to Rigby. I guess that means we're due.
Boise native Linda Moulton Howe has become somewhat of an expert on the phenomena. She has been collecting reports on
mysterious animal killings since the 1970s when she was a reporter for a Denver television station.
In her book ``An Alien Harvest," she says extraterrestrial aliens are responsible and that the federal government knows it. ``I've talked to dozens of eye-witnesses who have seen silver discs landing in their fields," she said in a
telephone interview from her home in Jamison, Pa.
Ranchers have told her about ``non-human creatures," carrying away their cattle. I'm sure she didn't mean
wolves.
Most people will find it hard to believe such stories without the proof that never seems to turn up. And many
cases of mutilation can be attributed to predators, mostly coyotes, who have a taste for the softer flesh of cattle that often are missing from mutilated stock.
In 1975-76, Idaho Department of Fish and Game warden Joe Curry examined several cattle in Fremont County that were supposed to have been mutilated. He concluded they were
killed by predators. ``I personally didn't see anything that looked like it was mutilated by a human being," Curry said.
Rigby veterinarian Ferrin Kinghorn responded to several reports of mutilated animals in 1990. He came to a similar conclusion. ``The ones I saw there could be a logical
explanation," he said. ``But I don't want to leave the impression there aren't mutilations. I'm sure there have been some."
That leaves the mystery that keeps stories like this alive. It keeps Jean Barton watching the Western skies and telling anyone who will listen to pay attention.
Rocky Barker, the Post Register's correspondent at large, is the author of ``Saving All the Parts: Reconciling Economics and the Endangered Species Act."
He can be reached at:
[email protected]
By Rocky Barker
Published: 06-23-96