Horses killed in mysterious ritual mutilations
PARIS— Armed with knives, some knowledge of their prey and a large dose of cruelty, attackers are going after horses and ponies in pastures across France inwhat may be ritual mutilations.
Police are stymied by the macabre attacks that include slashings and worse. Most often, an ear — usually the right one — has been cut off, recalling the matador’s trophy in a bullring.
Upto 30 attackshave been reported in France, fromthe mountainous Jura region in the east to theAtlantic coast, many this summer, the agriculture minister said Friday. One attack was registered in February, according to the newsmagazine Le
Point. With each attack, the mystery only seems to grow.
“We are excluding nothing ,” Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie said Friday on
France-Info, before heading to a riding club in the Saoneet-Loireregion, ineastcentral France, where a horse was attacked a day earlier.
“Ears are cut off, eyes removed, an animal is emptied of its blood ...,” he said, spelling out the morbid fates befalling one of France’s most beloved animals.
“All means are in motion to end this terror,” the minister tweeted.
After the first solid sighting of an attacker, gendarmes in Auxerre, inBurgundy, released a composite sketch thisweek based on a description by a manwhowrangled with two attackers athis animal refuge in a village in the BourgogneFranche-Comte region.
“I used to have confidence putting my horses out to pasture. Today, I have fear in my gut,” Nicolas Demajean, who runs the refuge, Ranch ofHope,” said Thursday on regional TV station France 3.
Alerted by his squealing pigs, Damajean faced down two attackers last Monday. He himself was injured in the arm in a struggle with one intruder wielding a pruning knife as the other slashed the sides of two ponies, nowrecovering but “traumatized,” he said. The men fled in a vehicle.
The following day, an attacker or attackers bled a young pony in the Saoneet- Loire. In another case, some of a horse’s organs were removed.
A donkeywho reportedly participated in past Christmas markets in Pariswas killed in a gruesome attack in June.
The mutilation of horses is not a French phenomenon, or is it new. In the 1980s and 1990s, hundreds of horses in Britain, then in Germany, were mutilated while in medieval times, the tails, lips or ears of horses would be cut as acts of vengeance against owners.
In France, theoriesabound as to whether the mutilations are a morbid rite of an unknown cult, a chilling“challenge” relayed by social media orcopycatacts. Speculationis widespread as to how barbaric acts, some surgical, could be perpetrated without solid knowledge of equine anatomy or on a horse in a pasture presumably able to flee.
“A fearful horse in a pasture won’t get caught. The horse who feels confident with people ... he’llcome, find it normal thatyouput a harnessonit or a rope around its neck,” said veterinarian Aude Giraudet, chief of the equinedivision at the prestigious National Veterinary School of Al fort.