A series of attacks on horse and ponies across France have left police baffled and struck fear into the country’s equestrian community.
Agriculture minister Julien Denormandie said there had been up to 30 attacks, from the mountainous Jura region in the east to the Atlantic coast, in what are thought to have been ritual mutilations.
Many have taken place this summer although one attack was registered in February, according to the news magazine Le Point. Most often, an ear – usually the right one – has been cut off, recalling matadors taking trophies in a bullring.
“We are excluding nothing,” Mr Denormandie told France-Info on Friday, before heading to a riding club in the Saone-et-Loire region, in east central France, where a horse was attacked a day earlier.
“Ears are cut off, eyes removed, an animal is emptied of its blood,” he said, spelling out the injuries suffered by the animals.
“All means are in motion to end this terror,” the minister tweeted.
After the first solid sighting of an attacker, officers in Auxerre, in Burgundy, released a composite sketch this week based on a description by a man who confronted two attackers at his animal refuge in a village in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comte region.
Nicolas Demajean, who runs the Ranch of Hope refuge, told regional TV station France 3: “I used to have confidence putting my horses out to pasture. Today, I have fear in my gut.”
Alerted by his squealing pigs, Mr Damajean faced down two attackers last Monday.
He himself was injured in the arm in a struggle with one intruder who wielded a pruning knife, as the other slashed the sides of two ponies, who are now recovering, but “traumatised”, he said.
The men fled in a vehicle.
The following day, an attacker or attackers attacked a young pony in the Saone-et-Loire. In another case, some of a horse’s organs were removed.
A donkey who had reportedly participated in the Christmas market in Paris was killed in a gruesome attack in June.
Theories abound as to whether the acts are the morbid rite of an unknown cult, a chilling “challenge” relayed by social media, or copycat acts.
Speculation is widespread as to how such barbaric acts, some surgical in nature, could be perpetrated without solid knowledge of equine anatomy or on a horse in a pasture which was presumably able to flee.
Veterinarian Aude Giraudet, chief of the equine division at the prestigious National Veterinary School of Alfort, outside Paris, said: “A fearful horse in a pasture won’t get caught.
“The horse who feels confident with people … he’ll come, find it normal that you put a harness on it or a rope around its neck.
“I’m not sure you need great knowledge of horses.”
She said an ear can be slashed off while the horse is standing, but the animal would need to be prostrate for grislier mutilations.
The veterinarian stressed that she did not want to describe how to put a horse on the ground so as not to “give the least sort of tools to make it easier” for those out to kill them.
“If I were in Normandy, I think I would be very, very worried about this epidemic,” she said, adding that security measures should be taken – at the very least, installing cameras.
Two mutilations have been reported in Normandy, France’s horse country.
Pauline Sarrazin, the owner of one victim, Lady, mounted a private Facebook group, “Justice for our Horses”, after the savage June 6 killing of her horse near Dieppe, on the Atlantic coast.
Aimed at sharing stories and advice, the group now has nearly 17,000 members.
France’s horse world is increasingly gripped by fear.
On Friday, the president of the French Federation of Equitation offered to help police investigating the scattered cases. Serge Lecomte said earlier that the federation would be a civil party in each case.
“We’re all afraid,” said Veronique Dupin, an official of a riding club in the Yvelines region west of Paris, asking that the exact location of the stable not be identified.
Her club installed cameras last year because of intruders, and someone sleeps there each night.
“Despite that, we’re not at ease,” she said, stressing how vulnerable horses can be.
“They may be big, but they’re lambs.”
With reporting by the Associated Press