France’s horses are slain, mutilated in mysterious circumstances

Armed with knives, some knowledge of their prey, and a great deal of cruelty, the attackers chase horses and ponies across the pastures of France in what may be ritual mutilations.

The police are blocked by ghoulish attacks that include cuts and worse. Most of the time, one ear, usually the right one, has been cut off, recalling the matador’s trophy in a bullring.

Up to 30 attacks have been reported in France, from the mountainous Jura region in the east to the Atlantic coast, many this summer, the agriculture minister said on Friday.

An attack was recorded in February, according to the news magazine Le Point.

With each attack, the mystery only seems to grow.

“We do not exclude anything,” Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie told France-Info on Friday before addressing a riding club in the Saone-et-Loire region of eastern central France, where a horse he was attacked the day before.

“Ears are cut off, eyes are removed, an animal’s blood is drained …”, he said, explaining the morbid fate of one of France’s most beloved animals.

“All the media are on the march to end this terror,” the minister tweeted.

After the first solid sighting of an attacker, the gendarmes of Auxerre, in Burgundy, published a composite sketch this week based on a description of a man who had a fight with two attackers at his animal shelter in a village in the Burgundy region. Franche Comté.

“I used to be confident putting my horses to graze. Today, I have fear in my gut,” said Nicolas Demajean, who runs the shelter, Ranch of Hope, “said Thursday on regional television station France 3.

Alerted by his squealing pigs, Damajean faced two attackers last Monday. He was wounded in the arm in a fight with an intruder wielding a pruning knife while the other cut the sides of two ponies, now recovering but “traumatized,” he said. The men fled in a vehicle.

The next day an attacker or attackers bled a young pony in Saone-et-Loire. In another case, some organs were removed from a horse.

A donkey that allegedly participated in past Christmas markets in Paris was killed in a gruesome attack in June.

Horse mutilation is not a French phenomenon, or it is new. In the 1980s and 1990s, hundreds of horses in Britain, then Germany, were mutilated, while in medieval times, horses’ tails, lips or ears were cut off as acts of revenge against owners.

In France, theories abound as to whether the mutilations are a morbid rite of an unknown cult, a chilling “challenge” broadcast on social media, or acts of imitation. There is wide speculation about how barbaric acts, some surgical, could be perpetrated without a solid knowledge of equine anatomy or about a horse in a pasture presumably capable of running away.

“A fearful horse in a meadow will not be caught. The horse that feels confident with people … will come, he will find it normal that you put a harness or a rope around his neck,” said veterinarian Aude Giraudet, head of the equine division of the prestigious National Veterinary School of Alfort, on the outskirts of Paris.

“I’m not sure you need great knowledge of horses,” Giraudet said in an interview. It is important to know how to approach them, from the front and not from behind. An ear can be cut off while the horse is standing, but the animal would need a prostate to undergo more gruesome mutilations, he said. The veterinarian emphasized that she did not want to describe how to put a horse on the ground so as not to “give the slightest kind of tools to make it easier” to those who want to kill it.

“If I were in Normandy, I think I would be very, very concerned about this epidemic,” she said, adding that security measures must be taken, at least installing cameras.

Two mutilations have been reported in Normandy, the horse country of France. Pauline Sarrazin, owner of a victim, Lady, set up a private Facebook group, “Justice for our horses” after the savage slaughter of her horse on June 6 near Dieppe, on the Atlantic coast. With the goal of sharing stories and tips, the group now has nearly 17,000 members.

The world of horses in France is increasingly in the grip of fear.

The president of the French Equestrian Federation offered on Friday to help police investigate the scattered cases. Serge Lecomte previously said that the federation would be a civil party in each case.

“We are all afraid,” said Veronique Dupin, an official with a riding club in the Yvelines region west of Paris, and asked that the exact location of the stable not be identified as a precaution. Her club installed cameras last year due to intruders and someone sleeps there every night.

“Despite that, we are not calm,” he said, emphasizing how vulnerable horses can be. “They may be big, but they are lambs.”

– AP