By Tim Binnall
Wildlife officials in Colorado are struggling to explain a strange incident wherein a whopping 40 cattle were found dead under mysterious circumstances. According to a local media report, the curious case began back in October after Lenny Klinglesmith of the LK Ranch near the community of Mercer discovered that an 18 of his calves had been mysteriously killed. His initial assessment of the situation was that the animals had fallen victim to a voracious pack of wolves, however when another 22 dead cattle were found on the property, the rancher and authorities were left with more questions than answers.
An examination of the downed cattle by Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) officials found that just five of the animals showed signs of having been the victim of a wolf attack. Deepening the mystery surrounding the case is that the carcasses were not feasted upon by the creatures, which would normally happen if they were the culprit, and an exhaustive investigation of the surrounding area showed no tracks that could be attributed to wolves. "It's perplexing; it's confusing; it's frustrating, trying to figure out exactly what occurred in this incident,"lamented CPW Northwest Regional Director Travis Black, "we have no evidence of wolves in that area."
Theorizing that perhaps the cattle had died due to some kind of disease, samples of the remains were sent to labs at both Colorado State University as well as Texas A&M University and neither study found little, if any, illness in the animals. Ultimately, Black conceded that "we’re scratching our heads" when it comes to solving the mystery of what killed so many of the creatures in one fell swoop. While one might be wondering if the incident is somehow connected to the cattle mutilation phenomenon, as of now, there appears to be no indication that is the case as there is no sign of the peculiar precise cutting frequently associated with such events.