Not to bring a damper to your holiday cheer, but this is just too strange to pass up.

The Sydney Morning Herald has a post about something completely bizarre and disturbing. 25 ponies have been dumped near a cliff in Northern NSW, Australia. Some of the animals were in early stages of decomposition. Those that weren’t in the stages of decomposition showed no obvious signs of wounds of any kind, leading officials to believe that all of the twenty five ponies had died of mysterious circumstances.

“No one around here would have 25 horses,” he said. “We’ve got a couple. Most people have a couple.” –SMH

 
Besides tracks that led up to the cliff, no other information was given about this bizarre case. The ponies themselves did not have any tags or markings of any kind, leading people to speculate. Some online comments quickly blamed UFOs and aliens for the ghastly find. Could UFOs be to blame?
Cattle and animal mutilation has been widely attributed the the works of extraterrestrials for decades, and a find with such high number of animal deaths tends to lead one on the alien theory path. But “Cattle mutilations” have never really been proven. All the talks of state-of-the-art lasers, expertly cutting and removing a cow’s internal and external organs have been debunked when observers noticed that through natural process, the decomposing cattle lost their soft tissue (organs) first. Maggots expertly ate through the organs, chomping through until they had left a clean cutout. Mimicking those “laser cuts”.
I’d say that this mystery has a more down-to-earth explanation. Possibly some new strain of virus that was transmitted to these poor ponies.

The bodies of 25 ponies with no obvious wounds have been dumped near a cliff in northern NSW, police say.

A tip-off on Saturday afternoon led police to a truck parking bay three kilometres south of Old Ben Lomond Road near Glen Innes.

The officers followed tracks to a nearby cliff, where they spotted the bodies of 25 ponies of various colours and ages in the early stages of decomposition.

There were no obvious wounds on the animals or any other indication as to the cause of their death, police said.

There were no brands, tags or any identifying marks that could help police find their owner.

“We’re keeping a very open mind because we have very little to go on,” Inspector Rod Shoesmith, of Armidale police station, said.

“They were found dumped over the side of a parking bay, down a steep cliff.

“I’ve never seen anything of this magnitude. It was a disturbing scene.”

Read more: smh