🐂S05E39 - Cattle Mutilations: Part 1🛸

Firstly, it quickly and tidily summarizes what sorts of oddities people refer to when they talk about the weird shitology category, animal mutilations.

Second, it justifies the warning up at the top and the explicit tag that we're slapping on both parts, because some people will find the talk of the damage done to these animals disturbing.

Also, since I've already put in the explicit warning, I get to say weird shitology without beeping it out.

That saves time.

Skeptical investigators will tell you what's really going on in most of these cases is natural, post-mortem, taphonomic processes performed by predators, carrion feeders, insects, and other biologically mundane factors.

But while that may be statistically true, the really weird part, the part that gets the weird shitology seal of approval, is all the adjacent circumstances surrounding these cases.

It's animals found in oddly inaccessible places, a lack of tracks, the appearance of strange lights, mysterious unmarked vehicles, or a reported lack of blood.

And we will discuss a lot of that stuff over the next two episodes.

But in the end, all we can honestly say is that animal mutilations of the type we're discussing have so many unusual features that we couldn't cover it all in a single episode, or in a two-parter.

Honestly, even an encyclopedic book would be challenged to contain the amount of oddness, and a scholar trying to tackle such a thing would likely feel utterly lost.

But my friend and fellow researcher, Lee Weiss, is collecting and compiling.

He has been for a while, and even though he's still in the data-gathering phase of his research, I suspected he would do a great job of introducing this topic to you fellow Monster Talkers.

So that's what we're gonna do for these next two episodes.

One more thing.

This is a disturbing topic, but I've had a few decades to get over it.

If by some chance this is your first experience with such mutilations, I think you're in good hands with Lee.

But you might find some of my comments sound flippant.

I hope a little levity is appropriate to lighten what would otherwise be a rather dark and disturbing walk through history.

Not just the animal deaths, but the economic and political story around them.

It can be a lot to take in.

I come from a family of farmers and ranchers and blue-collar people who know the toughness of trying to make it as an independent businessperson in these risky but vital professions.

So I'm not making fun of them, and I'm not making fun of the pain and suffering of the animals.

But take, just for example, the case of cattle mutilation in the extreme elevations of the Rocky Mountains around Colorado.

I could speak of those cases with empathy and compassion, but I cannot walk away from all that wordplay, people.

The stakes are just too high.

Firstly, it quickly and tidily summarizes what sorts of oddities people refer to when they talk about the weird shitology category, animal mutilations.

Second, it justifies the warning up at the top and the explicit tag that we're slapping on both parts, because some people will find the talk of the damage done to these animals disturbing.

Also, since I've already put in the explicit warning, I get to say weird shitology without beeping it out.

That saves time.

Skeptical investigators will tell you what's really going on in most of these cases is natural, post-mortem, taphonomic processes performed by predators, carrion feeders, insects, and other biologically mundane factors.

But while that may be statistically true, the really weird part, the part that gets the weird shitology seal of approval, is all the adjacent circumstances surrounding these cases.

It's animals found in oddly inaccessible places, a lack of tracks, the appearance of strange lights, mysterious unmarked vehicles, or a reported lack of blood.

And we will discuss a lot of that stuff over the next two episodes.

But in the end, all we can honestly say is that animal mutilations of the type we're discussing have so many unusual features that we couldn't cover it all in a single episode, or in a two-parter.

Honestly, even an encyclopedic book would be challenged to contain the amount of oddness, and a scholar trying to tackle such a thing would likely feel utterly lost.

But my friend and fellow researcher, Lee Weiss, is collecting and compiling.

He has been for a while, and even though he's still in the data-gathering phase of his research, I suspected he would do a great job of introducing this topic to you fellow Monster Talkers.

So that's what we're gonna do for these next two episodes.

One more thing.

This is a disturbing topic, but I've had a few decades to get over it.

If by some chance this is your first experience with such mutilations, I think you're in good hands with Lee.

But you might find some of my comments sound flippant.

I hope a little levity is appropriate to lighten what would otherwise be a rather dark and disturbing walk through history.

Not just the animal deaths, but the economic and political story around them.

It can be a lot to take in.

I come from a family of farmers and ranchers and blue-collar people who know the toughness of trying to make it as an independent businessperson in these risky but vital professions.

So I'm not making fun of them, and I'm not making fun of the pain and suffering of the animals.

But take, just for example, the case of cattle mutilation in the extreme elevations of the Rocky Mountains around Colorado.

I could speak of those cases with empathy and compassion, but I cannot walk away from all that wordplay, people.

The stakes are just too high.