By Tim Binnall
The owners of a ranch in Alaska say that one of their cows recently fell victim to what appears to have been the mysterious cattle mutilation phenomenon. According to a local media report, the troubling case occurred last week near the community of Delta Junction, when a pair of little girls stumbled upon the downed creature in a wooded area adjacent to a field where Tangy and her husband Matt Bates keep some of their cattle. Eerily, the slain animal bore many of the wounds associated with the cattle mutilation phenomenon, specifically having had its ears, eyes, reproductive organs, and udder removed with what seemed to be surgical precision.
In response to suggestions that the cow could have been killed by a natural predator, Tangy pointed to the skillful nature of the cuts as an indication that they were not the work of an animal. "We have a butcher shop,” the ranch owner said, "we know the difference." To that end, Tangy noted that "I originally come from Idaho, and we've seen this before, where you have cults that have come through and do cattle mutilations and take reproductive organs, eyeballs." Sadly, the animal is actually the third cow that the couple has lost in recent weeks, though it is uncertain if the previous two were killed in a similarly mysterious manner.
Hoping for answers as to the death of their cow, the Bates family have offered a $2,500 reward to anyone who can provide information that might provide a break in the case. Meanwhile, authorities in Alaska are also investigating the killing and tissue samples from all three downed animals have been sent for testing. While Tangy may have put forward a rather fantastic theory for who could have been behind the mutilation, Scott Mugrage of the Alaska Farm Bureau offered a slightly less nefarious explanation for why the cow might have been killed, suggesting that it could have been an individual looking for cheap meat, since "groceries are getting pretty doggone high."