This book is about strange incidents in rural Montana back in the late seventies. Cattle mutilation, strange lights in the sky, and purported connections with crazy UFO cults in the surrounding area. Sounds fun, right?

I can't say a whole lot for the editorial content of this book, or even the writing style. And what I'm about to say seems crazy enough that I wouldn't blame anyone for just dismissing me as a kook or a troll.

My parents were ranchers near Fort Benton, MT, a tiny little town which just happens to be the county seat of Choteau County. They are level-headed, conservative, religious people that don't buy much into sci-fi stuff or stories of alien abductions or crop circles or any of that jazz. To this day either my mother or my father will look you in the eye and tell you that parts of what are contained in this book are true.

First incident - my parents are driving along a rural route, coming back from a drive-in. Their two daughters are in the back seat. Out of nowhere, while on a hill, a blinding white flash of light fills the car and surrounding area. They stop the car and quickly make sure everyone's present. While no one saw the same light, others later claimed to witness similar phenomena on the same night.

Secondly, when they got home, they had a very, very bad feeling about going back outside. Something was out there - this was a primal, all-your-hair-is-standing-up-to-scare-predators feeling. My father and mother both separately got an image stuck in their heads, and decided they would go to separate rooms and sketch out what they were thinking. The result sounds funny - both had drawn something that looked like a crazy cross between a Greek satyr and a Third Kind grey - they decided to keep this to themselves for the time being, so as not to alert the kids.

The following morning, as they went out to check on the cattle, they found one pregnant cow lying dead in the snow, her fetus surgically removed and lying next to her. Something seemed weird about the scene (besides the insanely creepy implications of a dead, disemboweled cow with her unborn calf lying in the snow).

One, there was very little blood around the cow and the calf. Two, neither the cow nor the calf showed evidence of being eaten - the cuts were sharp and clean, and there weren't guts strewn about. Three, there were no footprints in the snow - only hoof prints - but there was no snow on the dead animals. My parents reported this to the local authorities, and you can see a photograph of this scene in the book (I think it might be out of print, however).

The last strange incident was a small calf, found quite a distance away from its mother. This in and of itself wasn't all that strange, just a little odd. However, on closer inspection, they found that the calf's tongue had been cut out - again, clean cut, no jagged edge, and not ripped out. The calf was otherwise perfectly healthy.

There may be some other explanation for these events; however, I have no fucking clue what they would be. Again, I understand how crazy and disjointed this all seems, but if you were to ask my parents about this incident they'd tell you the exact same thing, every time. No conclusions were ever officially drawn. But the set of incidents put forth in this obscure, locally-published, 30-year-old book are true. This is why I don't believe we're alone. ( )