http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,295481,00.html&
http://www.crystalinks.com/chupacabras.html(If you go the websites you can see pictures)
Texas Woman Claims to Have Found Mythical 'Chupacabra'
Saturday , September 01, 2007
CUERO, Texas —
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."
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"Chupacabra" Shot in Texas
October 2004 - Earthfiles - by Linda Moulton Howe
Pollok, Texas - What are the strange, unidentified grey-blue animals that people keep seeing and shooting in Texas? In May 2004, Elmendorf, Texas farmer, Devin McAnally, shot an animal eating mulberries that he also thought was killing his chickens. Devin was amazed that his bullets did not cause bleeding on the strange, grey body.
I had investigated the "chupacabras" mystery on a trip to Puerto Rico in 1996. Many locals described a grey-colored kangaroo-like creature with long teeth which was blamed for hundreds of punctures in chickens, rabbits and other farm animals, including some goats and dogs that were still alive after bloodless holes had been made in their forehead bone or neck. At the time, I talked about the Elmendorf photographs with a San Antonio Zoo spokesman who said it was definitely not a coyote, but he did not know what it was. Some of the Elmendorf tissue was shipped to the University of California-Davis Veterinarian Genetics Laboratory for DNA analysis and results are pending.
Now we've got both another dead animal that closely resembles the Elmendorf creature and a sighting of one of the creatures alive only one-quarter mile away from the site where this animal was shot on October 8. It was at the Pollok, Texas, home of the Womack family. Mrs. Womack's daughter, Stacey Womack, lives twenty miles away in Lufkin where she worked for 20 years as a vet technician and three years in the early 1990s as a zoo keeper at the Ellen Trout Zoo in Lufkin. Today she is a dog breeder. Stacey has a lot of experience with animals around Lufkin and Pollok and could not understand what her mother meant when she called Tracey in a very emotional state on Friday afternoon, October 8, asking her daughter to come help because there was a strange animal under the house.
Report from Stacey Womack, dog breeder and former veterinarian tech assistant, Lufkin, Texas: "My mother was just sort of hysterical because they had killed something under the house and they did not know what it was. I thought, 'This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.' They don't know whether it's a coyote or a dog?! I told my mother I would come out there and bring my digital camera. About one-quarter mile from my mother's house, I had to hit my breaks because an animal crossed the road in front of me and it was running with its head down and its tail down and it did not have any hair. It was a strange looking sight and my daughter-in-law was with me and she wanted to know if it was a wolf. I told her it wasn't a wolf and it was too large for a fox. So, we went on to my mother's house and went around to the back and there was the same animal an animal identical to what ran across the road. It was on the ground after they had just killed it and there was almost no blood. It was just red where the shot had went in (the eye). I was just totally dumbfounded when I saw it. At first glance, you would think of a deer's head on a kangaroo's body. The ears were real thick and large. It did not have any hair on it. The skin tissue was necrotic. It was just awful. I did not know what it was."
In Coleman, Texas, a farmer named Reggie Lagow caught an unknown animal in a trap he set up after the deaths of a number of his chickens and turkeys. The animal appeared to be a mix between a hairless dog, a rat and a kangaroo. The mystery animal was reported to be to Texas Parks and Wildlife in hopes of determining what it was, but Lagow said in a September 17th, 2006, phone interview with John Adolfi, founder of the Lost World Museum, that the "critter was caught on a Tuesday and thrown out in Thursday's trash."
In November of 2005 , A motocross racer named Kolt Jarrett spotted a medium sized to small sized creature in Floresville, Texas, At the Cycle Ranch Motocross Park. He was with seven other friends in a golf cart on trails near back of the park. Kolt spotted in in tall grass and small sapling which were folding over like it was as strong as an oxe. Kolt described it having spikes down its back with a wierd shaped head, with possibly having horns. It was a brownish red and had wierd shaped objects,possibly wings, on its sides. Kolt belived it to be the El Chupacabra.
In Septemeber of 2006, in High Rolls, New Mexico, near Alamogordo, A roper Trey Rogers spotted what he belived was the El Chupacabra. He was out in the forest with his paint ball gun looking for game when he spotted a medium sized brown redish-animal that had spikes down its back and wings on its side. Before Trey could get a shot it took off at the speed or fastest than the quickest rabbit. It was the fastest thing Trey had ever seen.
In April of 2006, MosNews reported that the chupacabra was spotted in Russia for the first time. Reports from Central Russia beginning in March 2005 tell of a beast that kills animals and sucks out their blood. Thirty-two turkeys were killed and drained overnight. Reports later came from neighboring villages when 30 sheep were killed and had their blood drained. Finally eyewitnesses were able to describe the chupacabra. In May of 2006, experts were determined to track the animal down.
In mid-August 2006, Michelle O'Donnell of Turner, Maine, described an "evil looking" dog-like creature with fangs found along side a road, apparently struck by a car, but it was otherwise unidentifiable. Photographs were taken and several witness reports seem to be in relative agreement that the creature was canine in appearance, but unlike any dog or wolf in the area. The carcass was picked clean by vultures before experts could examine it. For years, residents of Maine have reported a mysterious creature and a string of dog maulings.
On September 2006, the Lost World Museum acquired the remains of what may be a Chupacabra. Spotted, hunted and killed in late August 2006, 15 yr. old Geordie Decker and 16 yr. old Josh Underwood of Berkshire, New York handed over the bones of a small fox like beast that hopped, had yellow eyes and an orange strip of hair going down its almost bald gray back, to Museum owner John Adolfi. Its bones are currently on display on the Lost World Museum's web site while further examination and investigation continues.
Theories
Some cryptozoologists speculate that chupacabras are alien creatures. Chupacabras are widely described as otherworldly, and, according to one witness report, NASA may be involved with this particular alien's residency on earth. The witness reported that NASA passed through an area in Latin America, with a trailer that was thought to contain an incarcerated creature. There have also been UFOs seen where chupacabras have been at the same time on occasion. Others speculate that the creature is an escaped pet of alien visitors that wandered off while its master was visiting Earth. The Chupacabra does have a slight resemblance to the Greys, which could mean that they are somehow related.
Some people in the island of Puerto Rico believe that the chupacabras were a genetic experiment from some United States' government agency, which escaped from a secret laboratory in El Yunque, a mountain in the east part of the island when the laboratory was damaged during a severe storm in the early 1990's. The US military have had a large presence across Puerto Rico since the 1930's, with bases on the island used as Research and Development facilities (amongst other things) up to the present day. The lethal agent orange chemicals were tested by the US on the crops of Puerto Rico in widespread crop-spraying operations, all performed without notifying local people or farmers, and the efficacy and safety of contraceptive medicines was also secretly tested on islanders who had no knowledge of their 'guinea pig' status at all. ("UFO's Strangest Mysteries", Discovery Science) This may explain some of this alleged paranoia.
Another possibility would involve giant vampire bats of which a few fossils have been found in South-America.
An alternative explanation is that the creatures are not real at all, and the sightings are either a product of superstition and imagination, or simply other animals that have been wrongly identified.
