"The bloodless evisceration of livestock with no clear origin or motive," he says, taking a sip of his coffee. Someone who was sitting across from them gets up and walks away - maybe because of trajectory of their conversation, maybe not. Mulder's unconcerned. "They've been documented since the seventeenth century, but there was a marked increase in the United States after 1947 - which, as I'm sure you know, is the year an alien spacecraft allegedly crash-landed on the outskirts of Roswell, New Mexico."

That allegedly is for her, naturally. "These incidents of mutilation are frequently reported after sightings of UFOs in the area. Strange lights in the sky one night, animals cut into pieces in the morning. We aren't looking at mutilations here, but we are seeing a nationwide pattern of inexplicable marks on corpses after they've been abducted - potentially by extraterrestrials. The only way to know for sure is to investigate every possibility."