By the reckoning of one source, the area around Baker City is something of a focal point for UFO sightings.

I had to resist a powerful urge to confine that word — source — within quotation marks, where the dubious are often detained.

The Oregonian, which occasionally delves into such subjects, at least on its website, oregonlive.com, recently reported that Oregon had the 13th-most UFO reports among the states from 2001-20.

The story included a map of Oregon delineating reports by ZIP code.

The Oregonian attributed the data to UFO Scholar State Statistics.

I find that title passing strange. UFOs are interesting, to be sure, but I don’t know that I would brand the cataloging of sightings as a scholarly pursuit, at least in the traditional definition of scholarly.

My curiosity, however, was piqued by something else.

According to that map, the 97814 ZIP code, which includes Baker City and parts of Baker Valley, and extends east through Keating Valley and north to near Medical Springs, has the second-highest rate of reports, per capita, of any ZIP code in Eastern Oregon.

The map tallies 25 sightings for the 97814 ZIP code, which has a population of about 12,800.

No other ZIP code in the eastern one-third of Oregon has as many reports, although several have larger populations.

That list includes 97850, which includes La Grande. There were 18 UFO reports in an area with a population of 19,000.

Pendleton is within the 97801 ZIP code, which has a population of 21,500 and a sighting total of 15. Its neighbor, 97838, which includes Hermiston, the largest city in Eastern Oregon, has a population of 25,300 and a report total of 14.

Ontario, with 19,200 people in the 97914 ZIP code, had 12 reports.

The nearest ZIP code with more reports during that period than Baker’s 25 is the 97754 region, which includes Prineville and has a population of 18,600. There were 27 reports in that area from 2001-20, according to the oregonlive.com map.

The one ZIP code in Eastern Oregon with a higher per capita rate of reports is 97720, which includes Burns. There were 15 sightings in that ZIP code — 10 fewer than in Baker — but the population is just 4,530, or about 35% of the 97814 population.

I don’t quite know what to make of the statistics.

(Although I probably could, if I printed them, make a hat or a brooch or a pterodactyl.)

I’ve taken a few calls from residents who saw something strange in the sky, but it’s nothing like a common occurrence. Although with 25 sightings in 20 years, according to the database oregonlive.com cited, I ought not expect otherwise.

We have pretty reliably clear skies around here, to be sure, which presumably would make it easier to spot objects in the sky. But the same thing is true for much of the rest of Eastern Oregon, including areas with higher population densities than Baker has, so it would seem the explanation for the statistical discrepancy involves something other than the relative scarcity of clouds.

UFO sightings are sometimes associated with other phenomena, including claims of cattle “mutilations” in the vicinity, the implication being that alien rustlers were responsible.

This time I felt compelled to deploy quotation marks.

I’ve read a fair amount about cattle carcasses being found in remote places in what are invariably described as strange circumstances.

Typically there is little or no blood, certain body parts have been removed (eyes, tongues, lips and anuses being among the common targets), and frequently witnesses say these excisions were performed with surgical precision. The implication, of course, is that the culprits were of advanced intelligence rather than mere hungry scavengers, hence the insistence on “mutilations.”

The explanations proffered by skeptics, although they suffer from being mundane rather than fantastical, also seem to me considerably more plausible than the ones popular among cattle mutilation proponents, who usually blame either aliens, a sinister military operation or — that beloved scapegoat for all manner of misdeeds — a satanic cult.

But why would aliens be so fascinated with cattle, among Earth’s great faunal variety?

And surely the U.S. military would not need to resort to mutilating cattle to achieve whatever nefarious goals it might have.

Skeptics have performed experiments which pretty well convinced me that scavengers such as birds and coyotes are not only capable of inflicting the wounds commonly cited in cattle mutilations, but that such evidence should indeed be expected.

It’s hardly surprising, for instance, that dead cattle would not long keep their eyes, lips and tongues, all of which are tasty, soft and accessible.

And the absence or scarcity of blood is hardly shocking, either. The ground, as you’ve probably noticed, tends to absorb liquids.

The aspect of this “mystery” that might actually justify using that word, in some cases, is how the cattle died. But there are many causes more likely than curious extraterrestrials.

I thought of cattle mutilations, and their ostensible link to UFOs, because although there have been multiple reports of the former over the past several years, I’m not aware of any in Baker County that features the usual components.

Most of the cattle deaths that include the classic criteria were in Grant, Wheeler or Harney counties. With the exception of the northern part of Harney, which includes

Burns, all of those areas had a lower rate of UFO reports from 2001-20 than Baker’s ZIP code had.

The strangest cattle death I’ve heard about in Baker County — although it was a bit outside the 97814 ZIP code — happened in August 2021 near Brownlee Reservoir, north of Huntington.

A ranch manager found the carcass of a three-year-old cow on a public grazing allotment near the head of Fox Creek. Brian Ratliff, a wildlife biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, examined the carcass, which was about 100 yards from a road. He concluded that the cow bled to death from a wound that ripped away most of the animal’s tongue and severed two large arteries.

What Ratliff couldn’t determine is what caused the wound.

“This is a stumper,” Ratliff said at the time. “I don’t have an answer.”

Other than the missing tongue, the episode had little in common with the typical cattle mutilation. Ratliff found lots of blood near the road, including splashes as high as five feet up trees. He surmised the cow had whipped her head from side to side after sustaining the wound.

Ratliff found no evidence that the cow had been shot. He said, in contrast to the frequent claims associated with cattle mutilations, that the tongue wound was jagged, not precise.

Most likely we’ll never know how that cow came to its unfortunate end.

Like UFO sightings, some mysteries persist, resisting forever our earnest efforts to unravel them.