COWPOCALYPSE NOW

Tuesday, August 3rd.

Yesterday was two days after my Cattle Weirdness photo post on FB regarding the strange case of one mutilated cow (which I dubbed Fred). Whitney and I found Fred while hiking near Crested Butte last Sunday (see pic above). What was even more strange to me than poor, dead, Fred, was the behavior of his fellow brovines. I have included that FB post in this blog for non-FB’ers who’d like to see the original photo thread. 

So, as I was saying: here it is, two short days later and I had already talked to enough people about cows to feel a bit exhausted on the subject. It had occupied too much mental space at a time when I’m in a crazy crunch to put together the Fall Int. Film Series program and have a publication deadline that’s only a week away. I was at the Southern Sun (where I hold most my meetings with non-campus people so as to spare them parking on campus) (and ‘cuz the beer is delicious), and I was wrapping up my meeting with Allen, the Boulder Weekly ad rep. There I ran into Laura, who’d been following the Cattle Weirdness FB thread and she put forth another suggestion for Fred’s death: lightning. (But nothing was scorched.) I asked her about the weird behavior of the other cows and she said, “Well, cows are evil.” My friend Jason, who had just joined for dinner, chimed in and said: “They were eating him!” I was all “But they’re fucking HERBIVORES.” Jason: “Oh no, they’ll eat meat alright. They’re just lousy hunters.” I have to admit that mad cow disease came to mind more than a few times. If I remember correctly, that horrifying sickness got started in a very Soylent Green kinda-way (for the cows, at least) as they were being fed ground up cow parts.

I was glad to be eating a burrito.

Here are the 10 questions I can’t seem to get out of my mind:

1) What killed Fred?

2) Why was he missing his ear in such a smooth, circular cut along the side of his skull?

3) The head wound was very suspicious – tunneling in with surgical precision – what other boy parts might be missing? The brain?

4) Why was he missing his tail?

5) Speaking of the hind quarters; that was one cow-butt that just didn’t look right.

6) Furthermore: for a chunk-of-head-missing and anally-ruptured beast, the body was surprisingly clean of blood splatters. Why?

7) Why hadn’t other creatures come in to check out the tasty beef jerky buffet?

8 ) Similarly, and more to the point; why was Fred being so thoroughly avoided by all other creatures? The field was otherwise populated by equidistant and scattered cows. Except in the Fredzone. The Fredzone was the Deadzone and in more ways than one. It was eerily quiet. Part of me felt like flapping my arms at all the cows way off in the distance and yelling “plenty of green grass over here, guys! And no lines!”

But since I was also speculating that someone with a gun might be taking pot-shots at cows, bloody exhibit A being right at my feet, I sorta made myself very small and quiet and beat a hasty retreat back to the trail instead.

9) I’m not sure how long Fred had been sitting there, but he wasn’t there the day before when I passed by on the same trail. At the same time, he was clearly bloated – so he’d been dead for several hours at least. Why weren’t the crows picking away at him? All he had were a few flies. And I do mean “few.” I’ve seen more flies on a dead squirrel that’s only been baking on the street for about an hour.

10) Why would the cows later surround him in what looked like a feeding frenzy? It was like seeing cows moshing at a punk show. They circled around like sharks. I saw two instances of cows jumping up and straddling other cows as if in heat, and eager to mate. (Or, for those predisposed to even more disturbing thoughts, an orgy.) (But not a fun one, because one of the guests was dead.) (Also; is there a word for cow necrophilia? Google is surprisingly quiet on that score.) (Also: Doing a Google image search for necrophilia is a bad idea.)

Thanks to the social network experiment that is FaceBook, many of you helped to chip away at this list of questions. Rational theories abounded; lightning, bullet, beast, bored suburban kid, cult, etc. And on it went. (Thanks, btw, to all you FBers for chiming in!) Anyway, yesterday evening I came home to find a forwarded email from Whitney:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: <HDSmith@mtcrestedbutte-co.gov>
Date: Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 6:29 PM
Subject: RE: Cow Mutilation Photos
To: whitney

Thanks for your response. This is one of the Allen ranch steers that died from eating Monk’s Hood, a common occurrence around here. There was an ear tag (number) in that ear. Thanks for your concern.

So… okay, there you have it. Fred ate a toxic weed, died, a rancher cut off the tagged ear in the morning for purposes of I.D.ing the corpse. The body got nice and bloated in the morning sun. In the meantime, small critters burrowed into the head via the exposed missing ear section. Gas inflates the body so the hooves stick comically straight up in the air. Pressure builds. Fred blows out his ass like a well-worn innertube left out on a hot rock. Two curious hikers traipse over and walk around it. Other cows notice the curious hikers, and slowly trundle – en masse – to the same spot. They do this with the mindless and stumbling groupthink you’d expect from zombies rather than, say, self-cognizant beings pouring a beer over their dead homie’s grave.  Anyway… Fred is Dead, killed by a weed. Cow mobs are weird. End of story.

Or is it?

When Whitney sent out her pictures to police, press, etc., only one person responded with any real interest. His name is Chuck Zukowski (yes, I know… I know… Zu-”cow”-ski. This is either a wildly appropriate name for an expert on cow mutilation or, more likely, an unfortunate coincidence that gets a few laughs at the police department.) Zukowski is a Paranormal Investigator (more laughs at the police department, followed by backslaps and the sounds of handcuffs jingling away on gun-holstered belts). Oh, and his email and website are ufonut.com. (Cops are now in tears, they are laughing so hard. One guy even starts to choke so much on his Crested Butte breakfast muffin’ topped with extra bacon that he spills his coffee on a small stack of parking tickets – this to the unknown joy of several traffic scofflaws who are now spared a fine.)

But guess what? Chuck is a really nice guy, and pretty much the ONLY guy who is willing to do ANYTHING. I mean, he lives near Colorado Springs somewhere, gets a couple sketchy photos from a stranger, and actually drives for several hours to find Fred and, y’know, investigate this weird dead animal. So now we get to the present. Today. This morning.

Wednesday, August 4th.

Whitney gets an email from Chuck:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Zukowski
Date: Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 10:17 AM
Subject: Re: Fwd: Cow Mutilation Photos

Hi Whitney… We had found the animal and did a quick investigation.

I just got off the phone with the police chief and he told me about Monks Hood disease, and the ear was removed to get the ear tag.

The problem with this is when I flipped the animal over, the ear tag was on the other ear. Also, I noticed the animal’s tongue was missing. I’m trying to contact the rancher and let him know of my findings.

After talking with the rancher and with his approval, we’ll add this case to my website. It will be stated as an unknown death at this point.

Do you want your name mentioned as the initial contact? I need to talk to the rancher first because the animal was on private property and of course we’re talking about the rancher’s cow.

Any questions, thoughts?

chuck

Um… yeah. I have some thoughts:

WTF… is… going… on..?

Oh, that, and WHO is the…

Okay, I don’t know about you, but that tag thing kinda freaked me out.

Those cows were only tagged in one ear, so why would the police lie about that? Unless they’re all palsy-walsy with the rancher of the area and just covering for him. That’d be kinda like frat-daddies who do weird initiations and get caught in a bizarre hazing ritual involving sticking things in each others rectums only to have one of their buddies die of alcohol poisoning with a strange billiard object (probably the eight ball) stuck between his buttcheeks – and then having the Fraternity Counsel immediately disavow all knowledge of this and blame it on a toxic weed (ie: down-syndrome pot that goes by the name “Monk’s Hood.”).

Frats are, after all, secretive (not to mention obnoxious) groups with their own rituals. Kinda like Freemasons. Y’know, the ones that conspiracy nuts like to blame for Jack the Ripper and other stuff. Oh, hey! I know… let’s go to Google and plug in the name and address of the rancher who owns the property where the cow got mutilated and add “Freemasons.” Up pops a long list of Freemasons and, yeah, it appears his name and address is in it somewhere. But in a way I don’t even care because what is also clear is that there are more Freemasons in Boulder than Crested Butte, and last I heard Boulder is still relatively free of cattle mutilations (of the paranormal kind, at least. Organic burgers do not a cattle un-mutilation make). Freemasons can also do a lot of cool shit like let hikers walk along their private property to access a beautiful aspen grove. Oh, and they have some pretty funny hats too.

None of this explains the weird “animal free zone” followed by the “cow frenzy” thing. Frankly, I’m just more perplexed than before. Wanna have some fun? Check out “cattle mutilation” on Wikipedia. The first recorded one comes right here from Colorado in 1967 (Alamosa). It involved a horse missing a brain – and the area it was in was highly radioactive (greatttt!). By 1975 there were “130 mutilations in Colorado alone.” Reading the list of physical characteristics sent a chill up my spine because it talks of the “lack of predation on or around the carcass” and how “other cattle avoid the carcass and the area where it’s found” – but also “unusual restlessness among surviving animals.”

So what do I “believe” happened? No clue.

This is when being an agnostic totally rocks. I don’t have to be all atheist or Christian about it with the “God exists” and “God is dead” back-and-forthing. Nope. I can just shrug my shoulders and say; “maybe” – and to both groups. So what killed Fred? Freemasons smoking Monks Hood weed? Aliens with tractor beams looking to juice up their ride with more cow-lip? A jealous bovine furious at Fred’s infidelities? I have no idea. No… let me rephrase that: I have too many ideas.

And I’m fine with that. It’s fun to think that anything is possible. It adds a bit of X-Files enigma to my day, topped with a sprinkle of Far Side magic and Monty Pythonesque cheese. And if I want to play the skeptic, sure, let’s put on the Sherlock Holmes hat and reconsider the scene of the crime while scratching away at things using the process of elimination. I like hats. I like putting on different hats. I really wish the Israelis would don a Palestinian turban every now and then, and that the Palestinians would try out a yarmulke on a lark. People who only wear one hat are missing out on a lot of fun. They’re all “my hat rules! your hat  sucks!” – total party-poopers. Also? Their hats get gross, sweaty, and old – which make them unfit for changing weather.

Either way. Fred is still dead.