There’s a big difference between urban legends — those almost believable but totally fictitious hair-raising little stories that never seem to die — and rural legends: Urban legends can be about almost anything; rural legends are about livestock mutilations.Well, there’s also the one about the exploding cow. But like the baby in the microwave or the hook hanging from the car door, livestock mutilations also never seem to go away.

So it was déjà vu all over again Sunday when we printed an Associated Press story out of Great Falls that reported, according to the headline: “Cattle mutilation stuns ranchers.”

To anyone who was around in the 1970s and 1980s, livestock mutilations are an old and fully discredited legend, despite the continuing credulity of some ranchers and investigating sheriff’s deputies.

The story reported Sunday follows the legendary scenario to a fault: The cow’s udder, genitals and rectum were cut out with “stunning” precision. So was the left side of its face, the bones “stripped as clean as if they had been boiled.” No blood spatters were found. No tracks were nearby. Why wasn’t the rest of the body eaten?

In the past, such gruesome findings have led to tales about how a secret government program requires organs and blood, or yarns about Satanist cults using the parts in rituals too horrible to contemplate. For a while, UFOs figured prominently in the mystery, until the aliens apparently moved on to abducting human beings instead.

Look: a dead animal’s blood flows to the parts of the body nearest the ground, making it appear bloodless, especially if it has been dead for a while and the blood has dried. Predators naturally go for the softer parts, and their sharp teeth, beaks and claws can make what appear to be “surgical” cuts. Why didn’t the predator devour the entire animal? Do you suppose it wasn’t that hungry?Somehow, that explanation sounds a bit more logical than black helicopters, evil cultists or aliens from outer space.

At any rate, we need a little variety here. Did you hear about the guy milking a cow who, when the cow lifted its tail to pass some of its great load of methane, decided to light the gas? Ka-POW! (The man died in the explosion, impaled by a piece of femur.)

Now there’s a story!