cattle mutilation in Alberta

[Rigorous Intuition]

<!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Mutilated cow found near Paradise Hill</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>Kirk Sibbald<br>Wednesday June 15, 2005<br>Lloydminster Meridian Booster <br><br>He stops short of pointing the finger at aliens, but Ray Riguidel swears what he saw in his pasture last Friday evening couldn’t have been done by humans or animals. <br><br>Riguidel, 68, has been farming near Paradise Hill his entire life. During that time he’s lost his share of cattle under various circumstances, but the 10-year-old cow he lost this weekend was far different from the rest.<br><br>The udder was gone, one eye and ear had been removed and the sex organs were torn away. The remaining 50 or so cattle in the pasture had congregated as far away from the corpse as possible.<br><br>There were no tire tracks or footprints. There was no sign of a struggle.<br><br>Perhaps most bizarre, however, was a glaring lack of blood despite the numerous and carefully crafted incisions into the carcass.<br><br>“When you see a cow go down, you go look, but I didn’t have to look twice,” said Riguidel. “There was a guy with me, and we both popped our eyes.<br><br>“I’ve heard about (cow mutilations) before, but it never really sunk in,” he said.<br><br>“But it’s sunk in now. It’s real.”<br><br>...<br><br>After talking to a friend, Riguidel was encouraged to call Fernand Belzil, a rancher from St. Paul who’s been investigating cow mutilations for the past eight years. <br><br>Belzil – commonly known around St. Paul as the ‘UFO guy’ – has done documentaries on his findings with The Fifth Estate and Life Network. He’s conducted numerous radio interviews with stations throughout North America, and has put together an hour-and-a-half presentation he gives in communities throughout Canada.<br><br>Another documentary with Red Star Films from Halifax is in the works and should be completed later this summer. Although he gets paid for presentations and the town of St. Paul has offered to pay the gas bills he incurs travelling to investigations, Belzil doesn’t charge individual farmers a cent.<br>“The reason I get so much publicity is because I’m the only (mutilation investigator) in Canada,” said Belzil. “I’m the type of guy you don’t ask what’s new, because I could probably bore you for an hour or two.”<br><br>Belzil visited Riguidel’s farm this past Sunday, and based on his initial observations, he thinks the mutilation is authentic – meaning not the work of predators or a human hoax. <br><br>Upon visiting a mutilation site, Belzil uses a metal detector, Geiger counter and compass to record any abnormal electric, magnetic and radioactive properties. He also takes soil samples from around the animal – along with a controlled sample from 35 metres away – and sends all the evidence he obtains to a lab in Michigan for testing.<br><br>In most cases, he says the culprits usually take the tongue, one ear, one eye and the udder. Sex organs such as the scrotum, rectum and uterus are also routinely amputated. Predators, birds and other animals generally won’t come near the mutilated carcass for anywhere from a few days to upwards of a month.<br><br>Although Belzil has ranched for years, none of his cattle have ever been harmed – although one did mysteriously disappear many years ago – and he has never personally seen a UFO. His interest in these less-than-ordinary investigations started after visiting a mutilation site in Makwa, Sask.<br><br>...<br><br>George Larre, another rancher about 32 kilometres south of Riguidel’s farm, had a similar mutilation take place about five years ago. While the scene itself was gruesome enough, he said the behaviour of other animals in the area was equally disconcerting. <br><br>“The first thing I noticed was her calf wasn’t there, none of the cattle were there. They had all moved to the far end of the pasture and didn’t come back for 10 days to two weeks,” said Larre, 59.<br><br>“I went there, and there was no sign of absolutely anything. But there was a fair bit of pasture that year, so if anyone went there with a vehicle there should have been tracks or something, and there wasn’t,” he said. <br><br>Although Larre didn’t put much faith in extra-terrestrial life before this incident, he doesn’t think these stories are so far-fetched any more.<br><br>“If you haven’t seen it, I wouldn’t expect anyone to believe it. But if you really see one for yourself, and you understand what coyotes will do, you know it’s not predators,” he said. “Some people say it’s from up above, and I don’t know. I’m not going to say it is or it isn’t. But when you see absolutely no clues and no reason, you really have to wonder.”<br><br>Riguidel said he plans to leave the rotting corpse in his pasture to see if any birds or animals will start feeding on the carcass. But since Friday, nothing other than some interested neighbours and a few flies have even come close.<br><br><br><!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.meridianbooster.com/story.php?id=166883" target="top">www.meridianbooster.com/story.php?id=166883</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <p></p><i></i>