Cowmageddon

Posted by keelsetter on August 8, 2010

Exactly one week ago today I was in a clear green field near an aspen grove here in Colorado, staring down at a suspiciously mutilated cow. Aside for a few flies, nothing else was near it. Oblivious to its gender I dubbed it “Fred.” My girlfriend and I took some pictures and we continued along on our hike. Less than an hour later we returned along the same path only to bear witness to one of the most bizarre things either of us had ever seen: a bunch of Fred’s pals – PREVIOUSLY far afield and seemingly (and understandably) avoiding the poor, dead beast – were NOW suddenly swirling about Fred’s carcass in a frenzy, like white-on-rice or flies-on-poop. They were jumping on top of each other and pushing one another around in an almost perfect circular pattern, trampling about on poor, dead, Fred. I’ve seen my share of punk shows, but this was one slow-motion-mosh-pit-from-hell scene I’ll never forget. There was something so downright unnatural about this spectacle that both my girlfriend and I immediately got the heebie-jeebies.

To honor the weirdness that occurred one week ago today, today’s blog looks at how a movie buff digests such a strange event.

When I got back home, I immediately told my parents what happened. They basically said, “You watch too many movies.” Which is true. Those same films would now instruct me that this is the scene where everyone thinks I’m nuts and next thing you know I’m playing with my mashed potatoes like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Before I slip down the rabbit-hole of paranormal films, let me touch on the horror films that convey how I felt a week ago today: Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), Jeff Lieberman’s Squirm (1976), Joe “Bud” Cardos’ Kingdom of the Spiders (1977 – starring William Shatner!), and Stuart Rosenberg’s The Amityville Horror (1979). Why? Because it’s all in the numbers. When you see one bird, or worm, or tarantula, or a fly – well, that’s certainly no reason to freak out (except, of course, in the case of the tarantula). But when you suddenly see too many of these critters all in one place – and acting very oddly to boot – that’s when even Capt. Kirk starts to get a bad case of ring-around-the-collar.

Back to my cows…

Now that I’m in full Richard-Dreyfuss-doing-the-mashed-potato mode, it’s off to the internet. (On a side-note, looking for weird information in the seventies made you feel like a reporter about to crack Watergate – going to libraries, and tracking down hard-to-find people. Looking for weird information nowadays feels like… well, every single morning where I’m still playing with Google in my jammies.) There I find that the very first recorded and strange case of livestock mutilation occurred near Alamosa, Colorado, in 1967. It involved a horse whose neck had been “skinned and defleshed” along with “a greenish fluid which burned the hand,” plenty of radiation, and “tapering, circular exhaust marks punched into the ground” – and this all within a 5000 square yard area. Later, they found that the brain and abdominal organs were missing. It goes on, and gets even weirder.

For today’s post, I was originally hoping to watch just ONE cattle mutilation film and then give it a review. I asked around for suggestions, and the one that seemed the best was recommended to me by Ron Henderson, founder of the Denver Film Festival. He recommended a documentary on cattle mutilation called A Strange Harvest (1980), which they premiered at the festival, and which he said was “actually pretty fascinating, as I recall.” Unfortunately, it turned out to be one of those pesky out-of-print and “only on VHS” titles that, sadly was not available at any of the local video/dvd rental joints. A handful were available on Amazon for about $40 – and an order has been placed (but won’t arrive in time for this post, obviously). For those wanting a taste, a small clip can be seen here:

Wikipedia does a pretty good job of listing memorable pop-culture references to cattle mutilation that include War of the Worlds, South Park, Mars Attacks!, X-Files, and various video games and even wrestling moves! On IMDB, surprisingly, only 13 titles popped up and they are (in chronological order): Home on the Range (1946), The Return (1980), Endangered Species (1982), Critters (1986), two Japanese documentaries (both 1989), Fatal Sky (1990) Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County and Alien Avengers II (both 1998 and tv deals), UFO’s: The Secret Evidence (2005), one episode from the TV series Supernatural called Bloodlust, Evil Aliens (both 2005). This was using the IMDB key-word search, which I find suspect because it totally skips over George Kuchar’s 1983 film called… Cattle Mutilation. It’s all in the tag. Speaking of tags, cow ears get tagged – and they are a critical component to the mystery I originally dubbed “Cattle Weirdness” when sharing my experience with friends on FaceBook. As I’ve been fascinated by the many reactions (and possible explanations) that came in response, I’ve decided to share that FB thread via screenshots that I’ve made available here:

http://keelsetter.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/cattle-weirdness-the-fb-thread/

And, if by this point you’re not totally sick of cows, there is a long-winded follow-up that I dubbed Cowpocalypse Now that can be read below. It was originally meant for friends-only, so please excuse the smart-ass tone I allowed myself – it’s an obnoxious state that happens to be my default setting:

http://keelsetter.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/cowpocalypse-now/

To end on a light note and shift from cows to Coppola, my favorite Apocalypse Now parody is a short called Porklips Now, which can be seen here:

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9 Responses Cowmageddon

Posted By medusamorlock : August 8, 2010 4:17 pm

I personally find it fitting that you should be embroiled in this, as your tag is “Keelsetter” — which brings to mind the great mystery hunter John Keel. It was inevitable that you find this cow, see? I will be following this as it further unfolds…fascinating!

In any case, I think you were extremely lucky to have happened upon Fred, and vice versa! You have made this lone bovine famous!

Posted By keelsetter : August 8, 2010 4:28 pm

Some detective I am! I’m more like Inspector Clouseau. I didn’t even have the good sense to give poor Fred a gender-correct name. Rest assured that I am now fully up to speed on bulls, mavericks, heifers, steers, freemartins, etc.

Posted By suzidoll : August 8, 2010 7:58 pm

I love cows; they have such sweet natures. When I was a child and visited my grandparents, who lived on a farm, I used to herd the cows off the hill for their nightly milking. I was 5 or 6 at the time. Of course, that’s cows–not bulls or steers. I could never understand why aliens, weirdos, or movie directors would want to mutilate them.

Posted By dukeroberts : August 9, 2010 10:09 am

The non-cow pictures of the surroundings are beautiful. The mountain was amazing. And your girlfriend is pretty cute too. Interesting “mystery”.

Posted By Al Lowe : August 9, 2010 11:23 am

Keelsetter,

I will read about the cows later.

In case you are unaware of it, Horror Realm plans a Horror Convention in September in Pittsburgh, where NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was filmed.

It will be held Sept. 17-19 at the Crown Plaza Pittsburgh South. Cast and crew members of the original film will be making appearances. They include Bill Cardille, once a well known local horror TV host and the broadcaster in the film, and Kyra Schon, who played the trowel-wielding child zombie in NIGHT. She is the daughter of the late Karl Hardman, who played her father in the film. A new documentary on NIGHT called AUTOPSY OF THE DEAD will be shown. Appearances will also be made by actors who played assorted zombies in the production, the lighting supervisor and the sound recording engineer.

If you recall, I live in Pittsburgh. I have been receiving emails about the convention.
Please visit http://www.horrorrealmcon.com for updates.

Posted By keelsetter : August 9, 2010 12:52 pm

Duke – Thanks! My little “point-’n'-shoot” camera does alright for certain tasks. I just wish it had a higher quality zoom lens with which to have captured the “cattle weirdness.” And, yeah, Whitney’s a hottie. What she’s doing with me is a bigger mystery than all that cow business.

Al – The Horror Convention in Pittsburgh sounds like a blast, I wish I could go. But next month has me visiting the Telluride Film Festival and Portland, so I’m already stretching my time away from the office to the breaking point. Thanks for the link! Maybe a fellow Morlock will be enticed to take a weekend trip & file a report. (R.H. Smith, you know you want to – and I’m sure the kids would love it.)

Posted By Nick Tedesco : August 12, 2010 2:43 am

While my two experiences with animals reacting to the death of
one of their own can’t quite compare to your encounter, I do think these few occasions offer evidence that “something” is going on within their species when the death of one of their own is witnessed by others, or at least recent enough for the deceased to recognized by the other members of the pack, herd, or whatever.
Beyond the obvious grieving of dogs, and some cats, after the
death of a member of their household – human or animal – I am unaware of any other demonstrative reactions to death shown by
animals other than what I’ve witnessed and what you stumbled across. (There may be numerous studies and sites about this topic, but I have never researched it, hence my ignorance if this
stuff is old news.)
Decades ago, I witnessed a group of dogs grieving the death of
another, that had just been struck by a car. These half-a-dozen
or so fellow pack members surrounded the fallen member’s body,
each nudging and nuzzling, and then laying their heads on the body or their paws in seeming frustration that their efforts couldn’t bring the dead back to life. One stood guard, occasionally letting out a mournful howl, as the others would again try to resurrect the dead with more prodding and pawing.
Obviously, a very sad thing to watch – many other onlookers
were openly crying, but it did give some fresh personal insight
into the animal kingdom that I had never before experienced.
Then, several months ago, I happened upon a similar scene
late at night involving a pair of cats. One was dead, apparently
struck by a car, and the other was atop its chest, frantically
pawing and nuzzling, and then what looked like attempts at
mouth-to-mouth. This cat was either totally ignoring me or oblivious to my presence, but its futile gestures immediately
took me back to the above incident, and I soon left as it was too painful to watch any longer.

Posted By keelsetter : August 12, 2010 3:51 pm

Hi, Nick – Thanks for chiming in. A local author, Marc Bekoff, wrote a book that “demonstrates that animals experience a rich range of emotions, including empathy and compassion, and that they clearly know right from wrong.” Anyone who saw THE COVE (directed by another Boulderite) knows that dolphins can suffer so much depression as to want to commit suicide. I’m already an animal-lover, so these observations are preaching to the converted. I accept that cows can mourn but, man!… this was still the strangest mourning ceremony I have ever seen.

Posted By morlockjeff : August 12, 2010 8:54 pm

I think someone must unearth A STRANGE HARVEST for us as it was made at the first stage of the cattle mutilation phenomena in the media and would be fun to see more than 30 years later. In response to Suzi’s question as to why aliens would want to mutilate cattle, I think they want to understand why we harvest them in such large numbers. Either they don’t understand humankind’s desire for beef, dairy products, cowhide and animal feed but think there is something more valuable inside such a multi-faceted creature

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