A Missouri rancher who has found multiple cows mysteriously mutilated thinks aliens could have something to do with the disturbing deaths.
Since December 2011, Lyn Mitchell of Mitchell County, Mo., has found three of her cows mutilated, according to NBC affiliate KSHB. Each animal had various body parts cut off, such as their tongues, ears, udders and reproductive organs.
On July 9, she found a dead cow with a char mark outlining its body. One July 19, she found another with its heart exposed and teats cut off. She said the cuts looked surgically done and claimed she saw no blood despite the wounds. The local sheriff's department and a veterinarian couldn't provide answers -- and so Mitchell isn't ruling out extraterrestrials.
"The more it happens, the more questions you get. And the more you learn, you find more and more things that make you ask more questions," she told KSHB.
CBS St. Louis's KMOX notes that police are "not ruling out the possibility of aliens."
“We’re having to look at this from two sides," Robert Hills, Henry County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy, told the network. “Some people believe that there are aliens that are involved in this or the possibility of the occult going to the other end of the spectrum, we’ve talked to other people that say that just when cows die that’s what happens to their bodies.”
“We know that there have been quite a few deaths of cattle this year in Missouri due to the ergot fungus that may have lead to these animals deaths," he added. "We’re just not able to determine what the cause of death is at this point."
Discovery News raises the possibility that the cows were mutilated, not by aliens, but by natural predators like vultures, crows, maggots and blowflies. Carrion-eaters will often eat soft tissue first. And the site notes that "in many cases, what has been described by ranchers and others as cuts with 'surgical' precision turned out to be ordinary decomposition."
Mitchell is not the first to link cattle mutilations and aliens is nothing new, however. There's even a History Channel special dedicated to the supposed phenomenon.