San Luis Valley, Colorado: Horse Snippy found dead, neck and shoulders stripped to bone

The 3-year-old gelding Snippy, belonging to Nellie Lewis of the Harry King Ranch in the San Luis Valley, Colorado, just south of Great Sand Dunes National Monument, was found dead a couple of days after it had gone missing; its neck and shoulders were nothing but bleached bones, the cut at the neck looked smooth and surgical, the soil beneath was damp, there was a medicine-like smell and a nearby bush was oddly flattened. Alamosa County Sheriff Ben Phillips blamed the death on lightning. Denver pathologist John Henry Altshuler, who had come to the area to look for UFOs, examined the horse and found the lungs, heart and thyroid missing and a complete absence of blood; US Forest Service ranger Duane Martin recorded a pulse of unusually high radioactivity near the carcass, which others thought was only background radiation. After the Pueblo Chieftain reported the case on 5 October and the AP picked it up, Colorado State University pathologist Robert O. Adams investigated for the Colorado project and attributed the missing blood and organs to bacteria, birds and coyotes, finding a flank infection that could have killed the horse. Alamosa veterinarian Wallace Leary later found evidence of two bullet holes in Snippy's rump. The account follows the entry in George M. Eberhart's chronology UFOs and Intelligence (CUFOS) and the sources cited there; it is not an independent determination by From Beyond Space.