Cattle mutilations baffle Colorado ranchers
Manuel A. Sanchez has ruled out every logical explanation for the fate that has befallen the calves on his ranch in southern Colorado.Over the past month, he’s found four calves dead in a way that he cannot reconcile with anything in his 50 years of raising cattle: eyes and ears missing, tongues and genitals excised in what appeared to be a series of fine cuts.
Mountain lions, bears or coyotes would leave messier marks, he said. And Sanchez found no tire tracks or footprints that would suggest a human invader — nor even bloodstains he’d expect to find around the carcasses if someone had butchered them.
“There’s nothing to go by,” said Sanchez, who estimated his financial loss at $10,000. “I can’t figure it out.”
Costilla County Sheriff’s Sgt. James Chavez agreed: “There’s nothing to follow up on.”
Besides Sanchez’s calves in San Luis, several cases have been reported near Trinidad.
It’s not the first time. In the 1970s, ranchers in eastern and southern Colorado filed more than 200 mutilation reports, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation reports.
The agency investigated, even conducting an undercover operation, but to no avail.
“It was such a bewilderment,” recalled Tillie Bishop, a state senator at the time. Some people suspected satanic cults. Others grew convinced of an otherworldly explanation — space aliens.
