Date: July 3, 2014
Argentina: Cattle Mutilations in Rocamora, Entre Rios
By Daniel Ubaldo Padilla
A new avenue of research in the mutilation field opened in 2013, beyond what could have been predicted, and in regard to the information emerging from my research. The fact that an attack of such striking characteristics should have been made public – on account of the number, and on a single property in February 2013 – represents an exclamation mark in our line of investigation. This is the first time it has happened beyond the time period evinced since I embarked on this quest, but there are certain other elements that accompany this yearly periodicity reckoned in months.
In an effort to find an answer beyond the perpetrator, it is necessary to find the coordinates of the attack…of the moment…with the aim of coming face to face with the elusive culprit. As part of this search, and endeavoring to answer other mysteries that will channel an answer to the first, we tried to determine if there was a given moment for carrying out the attack, or whether certain conditions had to come about for it to happen. It was then that the statistics began to come together in an answer that had more than mere whiff of the esoteric.
The possibility of having access to many mutilations of the type we have called “traditional”, aside from peripheral observations of the facts, has led us to concentrate on the dates of the deaths, approximating the animal’s actual date of death as closely as possible. Based on “X” amount of mutilation attacks we were able to put together the following scheme, determining a “peak period” based on a lunar period and which from the standpoint of investigation, reflects a likely number of days per month in which attacks may occur, covering a yearly period running from April to September, which we have called the “annual period”, with a 98% likelihood of having a “predator moment”
2007: Two Equines and Four Likely Mutilated Bovines
In this 11-year search for the very intelligent entity behind the animal mutilation events, “mutilation harvests” are nothing new at the San Diego ranch owned by Edgardo Raul Slootmans. While my goal is to make this situation widely known, the material collected with regard to mutilations over these years is truly interesting, requiring its dosification through this blog. As I have told my associates, the material transcribed herein in columns is approximately 15% of all that has been documented during the access to this phenomenon. I hope my readers will forgive my evisceration of this information, but given the persistence of events in this region, it is necessary to refresh other important events that shed more light on current events.
Between October 15-18, 2007, the San Diego ranch was part of the mutilation wave that swept the province of Entre Rios. It was there that Lalo Slootmans watched two of his equines. His interest, a result of hearing the stories propagated in the media at the time, caused him to contact Dr. Roberto Lezcano, who at the time shared our “quest” to unravel the cattle mutilations. Accompanied by one of Lalo’s children, and thanks to his contact with Omar Izaguirre, who had official police duties in the dependency of Rocamora, we were able to gain access to the possible mutilation that very same afternoon. While no veterinarian was present, it was possible to ascertain the mutilation incisions on the right jaw and the absence of an eye on the left side, as well as a perforation of anus. But the most significant discovery was that for the first time we noticed micro-peforations throughout the animal’s body. Dr. Lezcano’s thorough observation led him to detect this nearly total correspondence in the majority of mutilation events, to a greater or lesser extent, with the subsequent observation and collection of fungi emerging from these perforations. Under the same inclement, intensely rainy conditions, nearly 100 meters from where the two equines lay, were four mutilated bovines in groups of two. Due to the considerable amount of water accumulated around them, the observation was made at a distance, unable to ascertain if these were really “traditional mutilations”.
Without expanding any further on the information on 2007 cases, I consider Lalo to have been another victim of the indifference and lack of response of the institutional authorities as a whole, and of those who govern us. When it comes to providing accurate explanations on events effectively recorded, which keep repeating in the area, they only fall into contradictions that are wholly detrimental to research itself, and denigrating of the influence which the scientific community should have.
2013: Eight Mutilations and Six Probable Related Deaths
On Tuesday, February 19, a phone call from Doctor Lezcano alerting me to the news should have been surprising…but it wasn’t. Although it was striking, considering that the event occurred beyond the specified annual period, it really wasn’t if we paid attention to specific concomitant patterns that accompany mutilation phenomena, such as the lunar period scheme, and the noticeable drop in temperature, unwarranted for those days in the month of February. The possibility of a traditional mutilation then gained strength, with eight documented mutilations, followed by five likely bovine deaths and the certain possibility of another mutilated horse in a neighboring field.
While the Rocamora Police appeared on Wednesday the 20th, they did not enter the area due to the inclement weather and the daunting hike required to reach the site: nearly 3000 meters (2 miles) from Route No. 39.
Accompanied by Lalo, Dr. Lezcano was able to perform an informal necropsy on one of the animals found, learning that the animal had died only a few hours earlier in comparison to the others. This animal was in the left lateral decubitus position, missing an eye, its tongue cut out to the root, with a mutilated anus and the beginnings of a chest mutilation, and an apparent squeeze to the groin. While these marks are startling, they are nothing new in cases of animal mutilations I have seen, but they do add quality to the ones already found. An inverted V mark, with its vertex pointing toward the head (like an arrow) and signs of apparent “clamping” in the groin are, to my humble understanding, a more than new contribution to research. Another observation centered on the animal’s heart: what startled the doctor the most was the presence of the entirety of the coagulated blood, which filled the various coronary cavities 100%. This is nothing new, from my perspective, since around 2002 we eviscerated an animal in the San Cipriano area, not too far away. We saw the same on that occasion, but by being a neophyte in the matter, and without the presence of an expert, the normality or abnormality of what was seen remained a mystery. Today we can say that the anomaly is real, since blood should be liquid in a carcass, beyond coagulation of the vena cava in a pathology that approximates traumatic reticultitis. But the question I pose here is directed at physicians: Is there a pathology in which the cause of death presents a total coagulation of the auricles and ventricles of the heart?
Diagnoses and Institutions
Upon reading subsequent statements made by the police to the press, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Of course, over 11 years of research, there have been changes in positions in that institution, and many of them, to the extent that they all forgot the small “red-muzzled mouse”, the yellow jacket and the carnivorous insect offered as explanations. Some understood that it is necessary to resort to science and credible diagnoses, but the unfortunate tendency to keep justifying the unjustifiable. Thus it was that eight days after having found the dead animals, and 24 hours after gaining access to the site, the police said the following:
“Minutes before 23:00 hours, the radio [station] at Basabilbaso learned that the information gleaned by the police commission headed by Cancio implies death by anthrax. This is an infectious disease known since Colonial days, highly contagious and affecting ruminants mainly, being transmissible to other animals, even humans…”
Dr. Roberto Lezcano consulted a senior authority at SENASA, and based on filmed, photographed and verbal documentation, the presumptive diagnostic was: symptomatic anthrax, also known as blackleg or emphysematous anthrax. When consulted by the media, Dr. Lezcano stated plainly: “…the expert said that samples had been lifted from two animals “which had been dead for a few hours”, allowing him to gather evidence that led veterinarians to conclude that the animals “had died of blackleg, an acute highly infectious illness characterized by an inflammation of the muscles, severe toxemia and high rates of mortality, affecting young bovines aged 6 months to 2 years old, and whose etiology is a bacterium.” He hastened to add that according to his dialogue with veterinary physicians, “adult bovines are naturally resistant to infection by this microorganism, from an epidemiological standpoint.”
Foundering Between Scientism and Research
The apt notion or description voiced by John Carew Eccles on scientism fits this situation perfectly, in which we should eliminate all presumption of conspiracy theories despite the police department’s expeditious statement to the media. He says: “ A pernicious insidiousness arises from the presence of some scientist, even eminent ones, that science shall soon provide a full explanation of all of the world’s natural phenomena and all our subjective experiences: not only perceptions and experiences involving beauty, but our thoughts, imagination, dreams, emotions and beliefs as well. It is important to acknowledge that while a scientist may make this pretense, he is no longer acting as a scientist, but as a prophet disguised as a scientist. That is scientism, not science, but it impresses the layman greatly, convinced that science provides the truth. On the contrary, a scientist should not believe that he has certain knowledge of the truth. The most that we scientists can do is to approximate a true understanding of natural phenomena through the elimination of errors in our hypotheses. It is highly important that scientists appear before the public as what they really are: humble seekers of the truth.”
Now, the swift but detrimental police statement does not even reference the explanation – or lack thereof – for the mutilated parts. But Doctor Lezcano’s statements, offering guidelines for the SENASA’s institutional specialists to render a verdict without having been at the site, offer the perspective of one who places himself in the role of the humble seeker of the truth. Furthermore, Lezcano forces the veterinary expert to expand on the mutilated parts, being unable to offer an explanation on the subject. While the necropsy yields blackleg as the cause of death, what I am seeing is an evident thrombosis with excessive accentuation, in comparison with other cases of blackleg. When we add the anomaly of the blood coagulated in the heart, plus the mutilated part and the marks found on the carcasses of some animals, plus the opinion of an acknowledged university engineer, a specialist in meats from the Province of Cordoba, who noted that he was startled by the blood clot in the neck vein, which was out of proportion to blackleg, the place where the characteristic blood clot from clostridium chauvoei is found. I add to this comparisons with living animals not described here, arising from research, in specific information gathered over 11 years. For this reason, and given the evident clash between scientism and official research, I take the liberty of putting forth a new scenario for the deaths:
For some special reason, the central area of the province is chosen for repeated incursions by a cattle mutilating predator. I could say that this special reason could be a special element: WATER and the characteristic wetlands of the Argentine Mesopotamia. This significant element would foster intimate contact with our cattle. The inhospitable landscape of the San Diego ranch would propitiate an attack by the predator. The sighting made by Edgardo Slootmans is no small thing. As we stood in the apparent street of marked grass, we looked toward the Gualeguay River from east to west, and he said, could it be possible that the herd of young animals had been chased? That’s why they were scattered to one side and another of the lane that empties out to the river. Three of the animals followed this trajectory. Another three were lined up toward the end of the lane, close to the river and parallel to it, extending a hypothetical escape down the lane, limited by the river itself at the end. This caused the animals to turn around and run parallel to the Gualeguay, fleeing from a predator. One or two managed to escape; eight were left on the lane. The abundant, brusque signs of manipulation, marks and mutilations suggest a forceful, invasive contact, seen in the cornea of the animal’s blue-white eye, and on the other hand, the invasive “clostridial explosion” caused by the ANAEROBIC action of the bacteria, possibly clostridium chauvoei, whose swift progress is aided by the aggressive contact with the predator tied to a certain luminous action that would accelerate natural processes to higher degrees, producing multiple blood clots. High coagulation in the blood and in the heart, aside from the blindness often seen in natural processes of excessive exposure to sunlight in bovines. It is also worth noting that since the animal was found barely hours before its death, it’s body temperature was elevated to over 40 degrees, notable when performing the necropsy through a pair of rubber cloves. I understand that the accelerant that sped the deaths of the calves, a sudden death caused by the sudden appearance of clostridium, which favored by the lack of oxygen in some muscles due to clamping, added to the stress endured, precisely indicates the abominable action of the mutilation, the reason I consider to be the main cause of death of the animals attacked during that lunar cycle. In other words, they died from the wounds caused by the attack, a concept that bolsters the line of investigation I have been following in the cattle mutilation phenomenon.
DEDICATED TO MY FRIEND EDGARDO RAUL SLOOTMANS AS PERSONAL SUPPORT AGAINST THE IRONIC REMARKS HE ENDURED DUE TO THE LACK OF ANSWERS STEMMING FROM THE INCOMPETENCE AND NEGLECT ON THE PART OF THE AUTHORITIES AND INSTITUTIONS RESPONSIBLE FOR PROVIDING ANSWERS AND RECOMPENSE HIM FOR THE EVENTS IN WHICH HE WAS THE VICTIM.
© 2013 – ALL CONCEPTS FROM THIS INVESTIGATION ARE THE PROPERTY OF DANIEL UBALDO PADILLA.
[Translation © 2014, Scott Corrales, IHU with thanks to Daniel U. Padilla and Guillermo Giménez]