Coyote Dentist

Gazette Telegraph Front Page, Colorado Springs, Colorado

If Coyote Mutilates,
It Has Dental Skills

By DOROTHY ALDRIDGE

GT Staff Writer

"There's a coyote in northeastern Colorado wearing a necklace made from cow's teeth!" said Sheriff Harry L. "Tex" Graves Wednesday after investigating Logan County's 50th confirmed cattle mutilation.

"On the other hand, maybe he collected the teeth to take back to his dentistry class," the sheriff pointed out.

His comments were aimed directly at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which feels that with few exceptions the mutilated animals it has examined in its laboratory were caused by predators, not humans.

Lines of communication are also down between Colorado's county law enforcement officials and ranchers and School of Veterinary Medicine at Fort Collins whose officials side with the CBI where animal mutilations are concerned. County lawmen and ranchers interviewed by the Gazette Telegraph feel they've gotten the runaround by both agencies.

From past performance, Graves feels that it's likely the CBI and lab officials at Fort Collins would report back that Logan County's latest mutilation, confirmed by Graves, was the work of predators, even though he found that all its teeth had been cut out with surgical precision and were nowhere to be found.

"We've had two previous mutilations where one or two teeth have been pulled, but we found them in the animal's mouth," Graves said. "On this one, all the teeth had been cut out with a sharp instrument and we couldn't find them anywhere."

Otherwise, the animal, dead since last Saturday or early Sunday, he said, had been mutilated in what has become a classic manner.

Found approximately eight miles southwest of Sterling, it was a full grown hereford heifer. Surgically removed was an eye, an ear, the tongue, udder and rectal area. The lower jaw had been skinned.

There were also interesting aspects to the county's 49th mutilation which Graves investigated and confirmed last Monday.

This one was a 3 to 4 year old bull weighing approximately 1,800 pounds found 30 miles northeast of Sterling. Its head and half of its body were submerged in a stream that ran through a pasture.

The animal, the sheriff said, had been cut with precision.

Gone were an eye, an ear, the tongue, testicles and rectum area.

There were no signs that the animal had been mutilated elsewhere and dragged into the water, Graves said. The only tracks found in the mud around the stream were animal's own.

"It's awful hard for a predator to meet up an animal like that unless he breathes through his ears or wears a snorkel," the sheriff commented.

Logan County's 46th confirmed mutilation investigated July 2 also had an interesting aspect, different from the hundreds of other mutilations reported in recent years in some 21 states.

The animal's left ear, eye and tongue were taken, the entire under belly was skinned and the rectal area had been bored. It appeared, the sheriff said, that all sex organs had been taken.

"There was indication that at least part of the operation had been done while the animal was alive and standing, since dried blood was on the back of both its hind legs," Graves said. "No blood, however, was in the heifer."

NEW VOGUE AMONG COYOTES-A COW TOOTH NECKLACE

He secures the teeth with the knife he carries

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