As of presstime, the heads had not turned up on eBay. Not the quail heads. Not the chicken heads. There are a couple of goat heads, but not the ones anyone is looking for. So where, Spring Hill, Florida, residents are wondering, are the heads? And more importantly, who is taking them? For weeks animal carcasses have been turning up in dumpsters, on stretches of highway, behind local businesses. All of them decapitated.

“I’m sure there’s a coven of witches or devil worshippers around here,” said one woman, whose front lawn has become a poultry graveyard. “These are obvious rites of witchcraft and Satanism.”

A man who found two decapitated birds in a trash bag suspects “voodoo, or something.” A letter to the St. Petersburg Times blames the Caribbean religion Santeria, but a professor at the University of South Florida dismisses that accusation, saying the Santeros “have a much more civil way of dealing” with their animal sacrifices: they eat them.

A local PETA member dismisses Satanists too, saying, it’s probably just your everyday psychopath. Police are investigating, but so far have no suspects.

» Scott Saxon