Snippy the Horse, is back in the news after almost forty years. Snippy, a three-year-old mare in Appaloosa, Colorado, became famous in 1967 when her owner, Nellie Lewis, claimed that she had been mutilated by space aliens. Lewis claimed that the dead horse gave off a sweet scent like incense, that its mane burned her fingers, and that the boots she was wearing were later found to be “radioactive.” No mention was made as to whether poor Snippy bounced when the aliens dropped her off. The Case of Snippy was investigated and included in the famous Condon Report (Case 32), which concluded in true closed-minded debunker style that “There was no evidence to support the assertion that the horse’s death was associated in any way with abnormal causes” (see www.ncas.org/condon/text/case32.htm).

Another spoilsport was local veterinarian Wallace Leary, who determined that poor Snippy had been shot twice in the legs with a .22 caliber rifle. This probably would not have killed her, but may well have caused the infection that appears to have left her disabled.

Snippy was the first widely publicized claim of alien mutilation of livestock, and it seems to have started a big trend. Snippy now even has her own Web site (www.snippy.com), which includes a Snippy store selling Snippy merchandise. Recently Snippy’s skeleton was offered for sale on eBay, with a minimum bid of $50,000. However, bidding was suspended when ownership of the bones was disputed (see http://tinyurl.com/y3qutv). No mention was made of whether any bids for Snippy’s bones were actually received.