The 1970s Cattle Mutilation Wave.

[DOCUMENTED] Reports began ~1973 and escalated through the decade; by 1979 press cited ~10,000 incidents (Colorado alone ~200 in 1975). Epicenter was the Rocky Mountain states - Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana (investigator Chris O'Brien notes 8 states reporting simultaneously at the Oct-1975 peak). [DOCUMENTED] Carcasses were typically found missing eyes, ears, tongues, genitals and rectal tissue with apparently 'surgical' precision, scant blood, no struggle, and no predator/vehicle tracks. Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm called it 'the greatest outrage in the history of western cattle raising'; Sen. Floyd Haskell asked the FBI to investigate (1975, citing 130 Colorado cases across 9 states). [CLAIM] Popular and ufological theories blamed extraterrestrials, satanic cults, or covert government/biological-weapons testing. [COMPETING-DOCUMENTED] Investigations 1974-78 (local LE, vets, FBI) found no substantiation for those causes; mainstream consensus attributes most cases to natural decomposition + scavenging. Historian Michael Goleman reads the panic as a projection of 1970s ranch-economy anxiety (precursor to the Sagebrush Rebellion).