Montana has a problem and if you travel through Montana and spot a herd of cattle, you'd be best advised to not slow down or stop to let the kids get a closer look because some Cattle rancher might shoot you. You see, the cattle ranchers in Montana are nervous.and rightly so. That area of the world has been having a rash of cattle mutilations that nobody can seem to STOP. OR explain. In the years from 1974 to 1977, the great falls area of Montana was the location of the most intense and sustained wave of animal mutilations in recorded history and with eight reported cases during the summer of 2001, the residents are getting worried that it's starting up again.

Some people believe that cattle mutilations are the work of some alien race doing experiments here on Earth and some people believe that these animal mutilations are the work of some mis-guided individuals or groups.except for a few minor little problems.

First, the animals are usually ex-sanguinated, that means they have had their all their blood removed. Secondly, the animals have complete areas of their bodies removed with such surgical precision that medical doctors have a difficult time to explain not only how it could be accomplished outside of a fully stocked operating theater but what instruments could have been used.

The main problem that the cattle ranchers have with these animal mutilations is that it seems that nobody really cares. When they discover that one of the animals of their herd has been mutilated like this, they call the local authorities to report it but end up getting frustrated because there really isn't much the Sheriff or Police can do about it. The government refuses to launch a major investigation into it probably because if they did, they'd have to admit that the cases across the world have some kind of common link and then where would we be?

However, there does seem to be a little ray of hope out there in the guise of the National Institute of Discovery Science,or NIDS. Back in June of this past summer, they received a call from local police in Dupuyer, Montana regarding a 6 year-old Red Angus that had been found dead and mutilated. The animal was lying on its right side, with the left eye and eyelid missing, hide from the left jaw was missing and parts of its tongue. Also missing were the animal's vagina and rectum. There were no signs of a struggle nor were there any tracks around the animal. But the most interesting part of this is that when the NIDS researchers did some cutting of the tissue away from the mutilated jaw area, they found greenish coloured tissue mass that contrasted with the pinkish skin in the area. They immediately decapitated the animal, froze the head to prevent decomposition and shipped it to their labs for further investigation.

NIDS conducted a bit of an autopsy and additionally subjected a lot of samples they collected to various testing. To insure that they would have some kind of benchmark to judge from, NIDS obtained an animal from a slaughterhouse and allowed it to decompose for 4 days. They discovered a chemical compound called Oxindale in the mutilated animal but not in the one from the slaughterhouse, which led them to believe that the compound had somehow been administered to the mutilated animal. Incidentally, Oxindale has been shown to cause profound sedation, decrease in blood pressure, decrease in muscular tone and loss of consciousness in rats, dogs and humans. NIDS intends on conducting more investigations on mutilated animals provided they can receive the animals in a timely manner. This past summer in Montana saw 8 cases reported but this was the first case for NIDS that wasn't too old to do a proper scientific investigation.

Montana has a problem with Cattle mutilations and it may involve aliens or not, but with groups like NIDS doing the hard research and developing the data we're getting closer to determining what is behind animal mutilations.

But that's just my take on it!