A puzzling cattle mutilation case that occurred in Oregon earlier this summer continues to confound authorities, who have received a number of bizarre suggestions for what could have been behind the carnage. Back in late July, five bulls were found having died under strange circumstances at the Silvies Valley Ranch in the city of Seneca. The unfortunate animals were seemingly killed in an instant and had their tongues as well as genitals removed with what was described as surgical precision, conjuring comparisons to the mysterious cattle mutilation phenomenon.

This was echoed at the time by chief investigator Dan Jenkins of the Harney County Sheriff’s Office, who mused that "whenever there's a case like this, all the conspiracy theorists come out." With two months having passed since the odd incident, it would seem that the officer's observation was rather prescient as his office has been inundated with callers offering a wide range of fantastic ideas for how and why the cattle could have been killed.

Jenkins noted to a local media outlet this week that, so far, "a lot of people lean toward the aliens" and revealed that he even received one call from someone who "told us to look for basically a depression under the carcass." He explained that the tipster's reasoning for the divots was that "the alien ships will kinda beam the cow up and do whatever they are going to do with it. Then they just drop them from a great height."

While Jenkins did not indicate if he found any of those alleged alien-aided indentations in the ground under the cattle, he did share a number of other very weird ideas put forward by people calling his office since the story first appeared in the news. Alongside aliens, the possibilities included witches, a Satanic cult, and even Bigfoot. Perhaps the most perplexing of them all is the theory that the cattle mutilations were the work of the North Vietnamese Army. Why, exactly, that outfit would want to slaughter five bulls in Oregon is a mystery that may be on par with the cattle mutilation phenomenon itself.