Chupacabra!

This time, it's near Houston! (Of course, there's passing mention of chupacabra sightings around here.)

SPRING, Texas—Paul Stuart drives down Gosling Road near Woodlands Parkway almost every day, but it’s not every day that he encounters a legendary beast. But Stuart says it happened, and it was so unbelievable that he immediately pulled out his video camera and began to record.

“When I rolled down the window and looked at it, it was very unusual,” he said. “Boys, that’s a chupacabra right there.”

...

But what makes Stuart’s story unique is that chupacabra sightings usually happen in Mexico or other parts of Texas—not here in the Houston area.

“This rare sighting certainly resembles what other people report as being a chupacabra,” said Stuart.

Keith Crenshaw, an urban biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife, said there is no such thing as a chupacabra. After viewing Stuart’s video, he said he knew exactly what the unusual animal was.

“It’s a coyote. It’s a coyote. No doubt,” said Crenshaw.

Crenshaw said the coyote had a very serious case of mange, and proper authorities need to be alerted.

(from KENS-5)

And the chupacabra was quoted as saying: I'z in ur state, xpandin mah reech.

Chupacabra!

It's back! From KENS-TV, the mysterious creature some like to call a chupacabra! (video)

Reports of blue, hairless creatures roaming the countryside from Elmendorf to Cuero. Ranchers talking of livestock being drained of blood.

Put the two together, and it sounds like the legend of the chupacabra. One rancher says she has the evidence to back it up.

"After six kittens had been lost to something around the place, I made up my mind we needed to do something to find out what it was that was taking it," said Phylis Canion, a rancher in Cuero.

...

The name chupacabra translated from Spanish means goat-sucker, for the creature's habit of sucking the blood of livestock.

Canion said her neighbors have reported goats drained of their blood.

"Is (a chupacabra) what it is? We don't know what it is, but that's what we'll call it!" Canion said.

But others call it something else.

"(There's) no chupacabra," said John Young, a mammologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife.

Young said the animal is a sickly gray fox with a typical case of parasites.

"When mange goes untreated, it causes this type of reaction. They start to itch, lose all their hair, there's this blue-gray coloration. And the animal usually dies from it," Young said.

What do you think? Watch the video to see the head in the freezer. Read more here. Then decide.

Chupacabra?

Or overcooked turkey?

You decide.

Hours after a purported mummified chupacabra was stolen Wednesday from a booth at Market Square — whose entrepreneur owners were charging money for a peek at it — the thing mysteriously appeared outside a local rock radio station early next morning.

But by the time the mythical beast was repatriated, booth owners David Walker and Brian Stevens had already shelled out around $100 to borrow a replacement mummified chupacabra from California. So for only $1, Fiesta-goers now have the rare opportunity to see two chupacabra corpses for the price of one.

“We're pretty happy,” Stevens said. “This is the only time that we've ever had two.”

Steve Hahn, of KISS-FM's “Lisle & Hahn” morning show, said he nearly tripped over a Target bag containing the stolen creature around 8 a.m. A note inside the bag said, “To Lisle and Hahn, from Market Square,” he said.

“It looked like an overcooked wrinkled turkey with fur and big teeth,” Hahn said.

[emphases added]

(from the Express-News)

You know, it's amazing how readily available chupacabra corpses are. Apparently you can order one from California and have it delivered overnight.

Thank the Fiesta gods for FedEx.

Chupacabra?

Really?

FLORESVILLE -- Robert Salinas said he's seen plenty of critters captured on his Gamecam, but never a hairless dog.

"If that's not a chupacabra, I don't know what is," he said.

Salinas, 31, captured the image of the mysterious creature on a motion sensative camera he had set up on a buddy's hunting property near the San Antonio River and Labatt Road, in Floresville.

(from KENS-5)

Jeez, how badly do people want to believe in this fictional, legendary, mystical, dirty-looking creature that seems to pose no danger to humans? Really, how bad?

Robert Salinas said he's seen plenty of critters captured on his Gamecam, but never a hairless dog.

Well, there's a first time for everything, even the spotting of hairless dogs.

"If that's not a chupacabra, I don't know what is," he said.

I'm going to go out on a limb and take a wild guess, and I'm going to say Mr. Salinas doesn't know what a chupacabra is. I mean, he seems to speak with authority, as if he's actually had prior experience with chupacabras (or at least the Texas variety), and he may actually be a leading figure in chupacabra lore. But I doubt it.

Salinas, 31, captured the image of the mysterious ...

Because dog-like creatures with mange are so rare.

... creature on a motion sensative [sic!] camera he had set up on a buddy's hunting property near the San Antonio River and Labatt Road, in Floresville.

There's part of his problem. No one's going to believe you when you start making up names like "Labatt" Road. Everyone knows there ain't nothin' but county roads down there anyway.

"I know it ain't no coyote," Salinas said. "You know what I mean?"

Hm. OK. That settles it, then.

Chupacabra!

Explained.

And you can blame Hollywood.

[Benjamin] Radford dug through every El Chupacabra mention and traced the physical description of the monster to a single event in the second week of August 1995, when a sketch from an eyewitness named Madelyne Tolentino ran in a Puerto Rican newspaper. Locals immediately tagged the alien-looking animal as El Chupacabra.

The creature, Radford noticed, shared a strong resemblance to the alien/human hybrid in the 1995 sci-fi thriller "Species." When he spoke to Tolentino, he asked her if the thing that she saw could have been inspired by the film. Indeed, she had seen the movie in the weeks prior to making her description.

"You can make a direct connection between the film hitting theaters, her seeing the creature in the film, seeing it in the street, making the report and entering the public conscious," Radford said.

Soon after, reports of nearly identical creatures began appearing throughout Latin America. But these can be dismissed, Radford says, because they're all based on Tolentino's Hollywood-inspired monster.

"What I've tried to do is take the whole El Chupacabra enchilada and break it into small mysteries and then solve those mysteries," Radford said. "There's no place else for those mysteries to hide now. If I haven't solved every piece of it, then I don't know what I'm missing. It's all there."

Of course, there is mention of the Texas beasts and how they fit into the whole mythos, mange and all.

Chupacabra lady is back!

And she's selling more than ever!

Remember Phylis Canion, the lady who killed a mangy coyote and wants it to be a chupacabra really bad? Now she has convinced KSAT-12 to do some advertising for her!

CUERO, Texas -- Phyllis Canion and her family used to joke about the legendary creature chupacabra.

Little did they know that one day the mythical creature would inspire Canion to start a business in Cuero, southeast of San Antonio.

Nearly 10,000 people across the United States and 21 countries own T-shirts with the image of the coyote-type animal printed on them that were manufactured by Canion.

"We ... make them inexpensive because I want everybody who can, to have one," said Canion. "And help to show that the chupacabra is from the area of Cuero."

If she really wanted everybody to own a shirt, she could just give them away.

Just an idea.

Chupacabra?

Or coyote?


You decide.


Oh, but they want it to be a chupacabra so bad, as KSAT-12 reports:

DeWITT COUNTY, Texas -- The legend of the chupacabra gained new life over the weekend as two DeWitt County sheriff's deputies spotted what they said they believe is the mythical creature.

Friday, Cpl. Brandon Riedel was training a new deputy when he said they saw the animal running down a dirt path along fence lines.

"You need to record something like this because it's not everyday you find something that looks like this running around out in the middle of the county," he said.

The short-legged, hairless animal has a long snout that looks like a coyote, but Riedel said he isn't convinced.

Of course he isn't. A coyote is commonplace. A chupacabra gets you television time.

"'Chupacabra' May Be Mexican Dog"

You don't say.

The strange animal in the hands of a Blanco taxidermist has been speculated as being the mythical chupacabra. But that mysterious finding may not be much of a mystery at all. Some have speculated it could be a breed of dog called the Xoloitzcuintle, also known as a Xolo.

“It’s been around for about 3,000 years in Mexico,” said Rhett Rushing, a folklorist at the Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio.

The Xolo is a type of dog native to Mexico and Central America, and was considered a sacred dog in the Aztec culture. It bears similar resemblance to the gray hairless animal that is turning up all over South Texas.

But, of course, there is added strangeness, even if the animal is just a Mexican dog and not a chupacabra.

“It was bred by the Aztecs both as a food source and a companion guardian, and it also had healing powers,” said Rushing.

(from KSAT-12)

A food source and healing powers. But, was it necessary to eat the thing to take advantage of those powers? I am genuinely curious.

(Previous Blanco chupacabra post here.)

Chupacabra!

T-shirts!

(From KENS-5)

"They seem to think it's not just a mange coyote," says Cuero resident Phylis Canion. It's been several weeks since Phylis Canion picked up the blue-colored road kill out on Highway 183, the animal she says was taking her cats and draining her chickens of blood.

Locals wonder if she'd captured a creature of folklore: The Chupacabra. "At this point, we just don't know," says Canion.

Now, Canion is capturing something else: International attention.

"These shirts, four of them, are going to Sicily. We have sent shirts to Guam, Iraq, California, Memphis," says Canion. The t-shirts started as a joke among family members.

Now, in sizes including triple-XL, are being shipped as far away as Australia.

Hey, the chupacabra is just crazy enough to be irresistable, even if it is just a mange coyote. Canion's town of Cuero is definitely going chupacabra crazy, and some are even joking about changing the school mascot to a name reminiscent of the cryptid. Who knows, this might be a boon for Cuero, just like the aliens have been for Roswell.

Chupacabra!

Now with new test results!

Remember Phylis Canion, the ranchwoman who wanted her dead, mangy coyote to be a chupacabra, so much so that she wasn't happy with a local college's DNA results and swore to get more tests done?

Well, she did. And the results are back. And the creature is not just a coyote. In fact, it's also part Mexican wolf! Booga booga!

From KENS-5:

Its DNA has been flown across the continent as Cuero residents search for a final answer about their mysterious, blood-sucking beast.

The much-anticipated results are back from experts at the University of California at Davis.

...

Results from the University of California at Davis show the animal is in fact a mutt: on the mother's side it is part coyote.

"On the paternal side, it had Mexican wolf in it," said Canion.

Scientists from the University of California at Davis say they can't tell when the Mexican wolf heritage made its way into the gene pool.

Canion's still not happy. She wants more tests to be done.

The Cuero rancher said she expects further testing to find out where all the hair has gone and why the animal, she says, seems to crave just blood from its victims.

And she REALLY wants it to be a chupacabra. Why, you might ask?

T-shirt sales of the chupacabra are still going strong, with more than 16,000 sold already.

There's even been legal action to keep some knock-offs from being sold on eBay where they were going for three times the price.

That's why.

"Chupacabra or hairless wild pig?"

WOAI-TV has finally picked up on the furor over the chupacabra/mangy coyote that has been spotted running around the Northwest Side of San Antonio. Oddly enough, WOAI is the only source I have seen so far that doesn't consider this animal might be a canid of some sort and instead speculates that it might be a pig.

NORTHWEST SAN ANTONIO -- Jaime Garcia sent the photo of a strange-looking animal. Immediately, the image of a (mythical?) chupacabra leaps to mind.

Garcia says he took this photo about eight months ago. He and his boss have seen the animal since then as well. At the time of the photos, Garcia says it was about as large as a "medium-sized dog." In profile, the creature's head is shaped a bit like a horse's.

Garcia wrote to News 4 WOAI that “...the nose looks like a pig. Heis hairless on most of his body... except on the spine he has the hairof a wild pig (javalina).”

...

Pig or “goat sucker?” Take a look at the slideshow and you decide.

WOAI's slideshow is here.

For the record, I think it's a mangy coyote. But that doesn't mean you can't put it on a T-shirt!

Chupacabra!

In Blanco this time!

Or, maybe not.

“Different, that’s for sure, very interesting,” said Blanco taxidermist Jerry Ayer with Blanco Taxidermy School.

Ayer is preserving the frozen carcass that was found by one of his former students in Rosenberg, Texas, located about 40 miles southwest of Houston. The animal looks gray with leathery skin, unlike anything that is native to Texas.

“It got into his cousin's barn and they thought maybe it was a rodent tearing things up, and they had no idea since they’ve never seen it,” said Ayer. “He got out some poison, and this is what they got the very next day.”

Ayer has been in the taxidermy business for 10 years and said he’s never seen anything like it. He points out the unusual features that are commonly associated with the mythical beast known as the chupacabra.

(from KSAT-12) (KSAT video here)

Or with a mangy coyote, perhaps.



UPDATE: The story goes national on the Yahoo Buzz Log.

Jerry Ayer, owner of Blanco Taxidermy School, has possession of the mythical beast's body. According to CNN, the animal was discovered by one of Ayer's students. The student had "placed poison...to catch an unidentified animal that had gotten into a family member's barn." Little did the student know the animal in question was (maybe) the chupacabra.

In the video from CNN (which is pretty gross, so beware), Ayer shows off some of the unusual features of the animal, including abnormally long legs and teeth. It looks a bit like the world's ugliest (and meanest) dog.

Yes, just a bit.

Lyin' about the chupacabra

Alan at Blogonomicon watches a History channel show about a wolf-like beast from Eighteenth Century France, and he's disgusted. He even turns the show off halfway through. But, the important thing is that there is a San Antonio connection in the show (and you knew there had to be one)! Unfortunately, though, the guy from the Alamo City is a bit of an embarrassment.

The two guys on this show were some alleged cryptozoologist from San Antonio and a police profiler from somewhere else.

My first complaint: their conversations were obviously scripted. Either that, or they both have the most monotonous and un-modulated voices I have ever heard.

But the big complaint, and the one which made me turn it off and give up before even the 30-minute mark, was a blatant lie.

The so-called crypto guy was trying to show the police guy that some odd creatures may be out there, so he used some search engine (not Google) to hunt down the Cuero "chupacabra." He gave the police guy a brief synopsis of the case, and then said something like, "scientists still have not been able to determine what it was."

False. False false false false false.

Alan's right. That was a coyote, possibly a coyote/wolf mix, that the woman in Cuero found and was trying to insist that it might be a chupacabra. But of course no amount of DNA tests are ever going to convince someone who wants to believe in chupacabras to consider another possibility. So, we get guys like that on the History channel shows.

By the way, whatever happened to the History channel? They used to have such cool shows about actual history. Nowadays we seem to keep getting weird stuff from those guys. Oh well, there's still the Military History channel.

Chupacabra nationwide!

The story of Phylis Canion's alleged chupacabra has been picked up by the Associated Press.

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.

That's cool. Imagine being able to show off your trophy collection like this: "Oh, yes, here's the twelve-point white-tail I told you about. And here's the mule deer I got in Utah. And the black bear, and the pronghorn, and the elk, and -- oh, yeah, here's the chupacabra."

Really, really wanting it to be Chupacabra!

Remember Phylis Canion, the woman who was sorely disappointed because her chupacabra head turned out to have come from a coyote's body? Well, she's not satisfied.

From KENS-5:

Despite DNA testing by Texas State University that indicated it was a coyote, the beast's identity is still in doubt to rancher Phylis Canion.

Canion is back to poking and prodding her prize possession, digging up more muscle tissue.

Ever since the DNA testing, Canion says scientists from across the nation have been hounding her for a more accurate match.

They want another sample taken from the animal that had haunted her ranch, and this time, the experts want a back molar.

So the South Texas rancher is playing amateur dentist and extracting the tooth from the beast's mouth to be sent to the University of California-Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

"We could be looking at something new. Some sub-species within a species. And that's what I'd really like to find out," Canion said.

...

The DNA results from the veterinary school are due in December and Canion can't wait for the results to see what had been lurking at her ranch.

Oh, she wants it to be a chupacabra----sooooo bad.

Chupacabra!

In small towns surrounding San Antonio!

Drake Gafford found one of the odd dead animals along Highway 181 South.

"I threw him in a sack on the bed of my pickup," he said.

Gafford described the animal as having "red eyes, big old fangs and claws coming out, just a sharp as they could be."

Both carcasses beg the question: Are they the vampire-like monsters with the worldwide following?

Gafford says he is convinced.

"Chupacabra all the way," he said.

(from KENS-5)



Do you, like Drake, believe?

Do you want to believe?

Chupacabra!

Revealed!

KENS-5 had DNA tests done on that chupacabra head Phylis Canion from Cuero kept in her freezer after killing the creature. And now, the true identity of the creature is known! It is---

---a mangy coyote.

And Phylis doesn't seem happy.

(Link to come later.)

UPDATE: The link is here. Watch it for a good dose of entertainment.

Chupacabra!

On Tezel Road!

Chuck McCollough of the Express-News reports:

As I drove out of my Northwest Side neighborhood around 4 p.m. Thursday I saw a group of neighbors staring at something a short distance away.

They kept their distance for good reason. It appeared to be a mange-covered coyote, and it was roaming the area just as school children headed home in the Tezel Road area.

Look at the photo and see what you think it is.

Some might think it is a chupacabra! T-shirts, anyone?

Chupacabra!

Same mangy coyote, but this time it was reported on by KSAT-12:

SAN ANTONIO -- A San Antonio resident claims to have seen the mysterious four-legged animal we know as the Chupacabra.

This time, it was caught on tape on the city's northwest side.

The animal was also hit by a car going 40 miles-per-hour, said an e-mailer to KSAT 12 News.

It was dazed and confused before it suddently [sic] popped up and darted away.

Video here. And I like this screen cap for the story:



How cute! Someone got that poor animal a blanket to lay on. Of course, some mange medicine would be better for him.

Two-legged dog?

Or chupacabra?

You decide.