Chupacabra? Cryptozoology is Big This Summer in Cuero

I love this kinda stuff... a Cuero, Texas rancher and big game hunter, Phylis Canion (below right, with "friend"), says she's got herself real live dead chupcabra, the mythical goat-sucker of Mexican and Puerto Rican folklore.

(Won't this look nice mounted next to the zebra?)
Phylis keeps the head of the beast wrapped up in her freezer with plans to mount it on her trophy wall. (After losing dozens of chickens and pets to the creature, I'm sure she's entitled, but is it really Kosher to mount road kill?)

I've read the stories and seen the pictures, and it looks a lot like pictures of "the Elmendorf Beast", found near Elmendorf, Texas in '04, which a UT professor declared was merely a very unhealthy coyote with really bad mange.

But supposedly officials at the San Antonio Zoo said the remains were definitely NOT coyote, they just didn't know exactly what it was....

Anyway, if chupacabras do exist, and if the Cuero beastie is is one, the DNA results, which are due any day now, should settle it. The nasty-looking, hairless, fox-like fanged critter, and others like it, were sighted many times in the area before one was recently found dead on the highway.

Pictures and of course t-shirts (below) of this latest alleged chupcabra are floating around, but until DNA results return, no one will be satisfied with guesses.

Personally, I'm most intrigued by the story that the creature exsanguinates it's prey without eating it. No way that's a coyote or a fox! I lived in the country for a long time, and I promise you, coyotes and foxes eat their prey; sometimes they eat it on the spot of the kill, sometimes they take it "to go", but they don't suck all the blood out and just leave...even if they're getting shot at, they try to take the remains if they can.

A coyote just sucking blood and leaving all the meat? That dog won't hunt. No pun intended.

Here's the story from AP:

Has a Mythical Beast Turned Up in Texas?
By ELIZABETH WHITE
CUERO, Texas (AP) — Phylis Canion lived in Africa for four years. She's been a hunter all her life and has the mounted heads of a zebra and other exotic animals in her house to prove it. But the roadkill she found last month outside her ranch was a new one even for her, worth putting in a freezer hidden from curious onlookers: Canion believes she may have the head of the mythical, bloodsucking chupacabra.

"It is one ugly creature," Canion said, holding the head of the mammal, which has big ears, large fanged teeth and grayish-blue, mostly hairless skin.

Canion and some of her neighbors discovered the 40-pound bodies of three of the animals over four days in July outside her ranch in Cuero, 80 miles southeast of San Antonio. Canion said she saved the head of the one she found so she can get to get to the bottom of its ancestry through DNA testing and then mount it for posterity.

She suspects, as have many rural denizens over the years, that a chupacabra may have killed as many as 26 of her chickens in the past couple of years.

"I've seen a lot of nasty stuff. I've never seen anything like this," she said.

What tipped Canion to the possibility that this was no ugly coyote, but perhaps the vampire-like beast, is that the chickens weren't eaten or carried off — all the blood was drained from them, she said.

Chupacabra means "goat sucker" in Spanish, and it is said to have originated in Latin America, specifically Puerto Rico and Mexico.

Canion thinks recent heavy rains ran them right out of their dens.

"I think it could have wolf in it," Canion said. "It has to be a cross between two or three different things."

She said the finding has captured the imagination of locals, just like purported sightings of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster have elsewhere.

But what folks are calling a chupacabra is probably just a strange breed of dog, said veterinarian Travis Schaar of the Main Street Animal Hospital in nearby Victoria. "I'm not going to tell you that's not a chupacabra. I just think in my opinion a chupacabra is a dog," said Schaar, who has seen Canion's find. The "chupacabras" could have all been part of a mutated litter of dogs, or they may be a new kind of mutt, he said.

As for the bloodsucking, Schaar said that this particular canine may simply have a preference for blood, letting its prey bleed out and licking it up.

Chupacabra or not, the discovery has spawned a local and international craze. Canion has started selling T-shirts that read: "2007, The Summer of the Chupacabra, Cuero, Texas," accompanied by a caricature of the creature. The $5 shirts have gone all over the world, including Japan, Australia and Brunei. Schaar also said he has one.

"If everyone has a fun time with it, we'll keep doing it," she said. "It's good for Cuero."

http://www.unexplainedresearch.com/in_the_news/texas_mystery_creature.html

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jgIXOzgj5X8SCBnCesj3lr62Yczw

http://www.thevictoriaadvocate.com/632/story/94241.html

http://www.thevictoriaadvocate.com/428/story/106363.html