COLUMN: We take weirdness in stride
By JIM ALBANESE
Don't know what it is about the supernatural and the unworldly, but some of us are more susceptible than skeptical, even if we haven't had our own mysterious encounter. Every Wednesday night, for example, my world stops and I'm entranced in front of my TV watching the SciFi Channel's "Ghost Hunters."
The entire catalog of weirdness appeals to a large number of us, whether it be alien spaceship crashes, crop circles, cattle mutilations and now, most ominously, human abductions by space creatures. I'm not saying I believe; I'm just saying I don't disbelieve.
But our great-great grandparents were made of sturdier stuff. For instance, in the winter of 1887-88, they had their own cattle-mutilation mystery right here in the Corral de Tierra area. It made headlines, of course, in the local papers, but no one panicked or fled into the hills. In fact, this episode evoked no fear, just curiosity.
And if not gory, the events of that long-ago winter fit into the "icky" category.
J.B. Iverson and William Vanderhurst, two well-to-do gentlemen of early Salinas, were partners in a cattle venture in the Corral de Tierra area. In December 1887, after the customary rains that mark the cusp between fall and winter in Monterey County, the two hooked up a horse and buggy and decided to drive out to inspect the spread.
They looked over the stock, nodded in accord that the herd looked especially promising, took a drag on their cigars, then noticed something odd. One of the 2-year-old steers appeared to be laboring a bit as it walked along. Iverson, a blacksmith, suggested that perhaps the animal's hooves were loose. That sometimes happens, he said.
They told the foreman to put the steer in a stable and feed it for a couple of weeks and see what happened. They'd come by later for a closer look around the first of the year.
I've been asked if I make some of this stuff up. I don't. But to assuage the skeptics, I'm going to reprint the rest of this story just as it appeared in the January 12, 1888, edition of the Salinas Weekly Index:
"The two gentlemen visited the ranch again the day before yesterday and, to their great amazement, found that both the hind feet of his steership had broken or dropped off at the fetlock joint. The animal was standing on his stumps in the stable eating hay as though nothing unusual had happened in regard to his anatomy.
"There was no sign of blood or decay where skin had separated from skin or bone from bone. The steer is in good order, bright and lively and eats well. Mr. Iverson has one of the detached feet on exhibition and it has been viewed by scores of people.
"It is certainly a very curious freak of nature of which we have, as yet, heard no satisfactory explanation."
http://www.thecalifornian.com/apps/pbcs ... 50312/1002
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