Shasta County: Wolf Hybrids Amok

From Boing Boing, this item on illegal wolf hybrids that have gotten loose and are roaming Shasta county. Escaped pack of hybrid beasts evading capture in Northern California town - Boing Boing

Red Wolf DNA in Strange Canines?

Not much there. But here it is.

A collection of local animal news

I had saved the following news items from October, not knowing quite what to do with them. I only had the feeling they were important, and, was struck by the juxtaposition of these items; all appeared in the local paper on the same day. October 27, 2017.

Nothing of a supernatural cryptid nature, but still interesting for the number of animal related items on the same day, as well as the content itself.

All are from the Eugene-Springfield, Oregon, Register Guard newspaper.

First item: Cougar Sightings on the rise near Oregon Coast. 

An updated cougar management plan, approved by the Fish and Wildlife Commission in mid-October, found that the coast management zone has reported a rise in cougar sightings, as well as an increase in conflicts with the big cats. 

Now, state biologists based in Newport are beginning the first-ever coastal effort to attach GPS collars to adult cougars and track their movements to see just how far these predators wander, what they eat and where they might be going next. 

The coast management zone is a large area that includes the northern section of the Cascade Mountain Range, the Portland, Salem and Eugene metroplexes and the rural North Coast. For years these areas were written off, not considered good cougar habitat, said Derek Broman, carnivore-furbearer coordinator for the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Department.

Next: Clusters of butterflies stuck up North (could not find a link for this item)
An AP news item about Monarch butterflies still in the PNW and Canada, when they should be on their way to Mexico. Overall, Monarch butterflies have been staying in the northern part of the U.S., as well as Canada, long past when they should be staying. The reason: "…unusually warm weather and strong winds" according to biologist Elizabeth Howard. (Register Guard, October 27, 2017.)

Then an item about wolves in Oregon: Reward offered in killing of protected gray wolf.

Ending with Sea Lion Alert: The outbreak killing the marine mammal also is a danger to pets:

A bacteria outbreak is making sea lions sick along the Oregon Coast, so state officials are warning people and their dogs to stay away from the animals.

The outbreak began in September and likely will last into December, said Jim Rice, a researcher at Oregon State University. He studies and helps sick or stuck animals along the entire Oregon Coast as stranding coordinator with the Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network. Calls about distressed or dead sea lions have been coming in regularly.

“I’m getting at least one a day,” he said Thursday. “It’s sometimes four, maybe five.”OSU’s Oregon Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory has confirmed at least eight cases of leptospirosis in dead sea lions since the outbreak began, Rice said. The most recent such outbreak in Oregon was in 2010

Twenty something years ago, in grad school, I told my mentor/professor that I was collecting news items about animals, and specifically, any strange animal behavior items. (my area was supernatural folklore.) He told me that my project sounded promising, but, he asked, what was the "why?" Why was I doing this? What was I wanting to show, to learn?

I didn't know. I still don't. The above items are not supernatural in any way, but , aside from any unexplained mystery aspect, any news about animals is interesting. We can learn from the signals. The relationships, predictive programing, seeming prophetic signs. Clues to not just the mundane -- which is proving to be anything but, given our global envirnomental context -- but the things that go bump in the night.

Yeti/Wild Thing Synchronicity

I had a very disturbing dream last night. I think it was because I was coming down with something and my body/subconscious was reacting to that, because after I was awake for about an hour, I suddenly felt clammy, chilled, sore throat -- fall crud. The dream sounds almost funny in some ways but it was very scary, just your basic all around nightmare. Something about the Yeti, with giant claws, ripping people apart. And smaller sized Yetis -- in the dream, they were called "Yet-its" -- who looked more like stuffed toys than real creatures. They were watching the big monster Yeti dismembering people, their bodies (or, pieces of their bodies) slowly slip down the outside of the glass on the windows of the second floor room where I was watching all this, and damn glad of course I wasn't one of the victims. Blood, guts, human body parts, all sliding down the glass. The "Yet -its" were shocked, and sad, at this, because the big monster Yeti wasn't supposed to be a murderous monster, but something went wrong.

I was telling someone at work about this dream and described the "Yet-its" as looking like the characters from Where the Wild Things Are. And a minute later, someone walks into the room with a T-shirt with a large monster character from the book, with the title, in large letters: Where the Wild Things Are.

So, owls and Yetis and Wild Things; a message, synchronicity? Maybe the "message" is simply the appearance of the synchronicities themselves, appearing in animal form, since that's where I like to be -- in the animal realm.

As to the nature of the yucky dream; had another violent dream the night before that, though not involving animals. Sadly, a person I know. Some personal issues in my life right now. Not surprising, given that and my run down state, that my dream mind conjures up attacking Yetis!

A Constrast in Chupies

(Such a weird bit of synchronicity -- I had just finished this piece, checked out the Anomalist, found the following link to Micah A. Hanks Gralien Report to his excellent chupie article: Blood-Sucking Chupacabra to Blame for Farm Deaths? !!!!)

Over ten years ago, when I first heard about the chupacabras, images of the creature weren't easy to find. There were no actual photos or video of the creature, though some supposed real ones, like this one:

The story that I recall accompanying the above image was that a custodian in the Los Angeles area (I think) had found it.

There were also the "alien" chupacabra renderings:

Along with the stories. Red glowing eyes, spines on the back, jumping extremely high or "flying," found on rooftops, trees, going over fences. Claw like hands, bipedal. And the dead animals found in the creature's wake: chickens, rabbits, etc. were found to have been desanguiated (completely drained of blood) with only two deep puncture wounds in their necks.

The stories of the chupacabras, originating from Puerto Rico, soon "jumped" and stories of the creature started to come out of Florida and Mexico. And I remember short news item from Coast to Coast, via Art Bell, that there were reports of chupacabras in Oregon!

(Stories of the chupacabras, while new to some of us in the United States, were not new to others. Puerto Rico has a history of blood sucking creature lore, for example, as Micah Hanks discusses in his recent article on chupie.)

The above stories of the chupacabras involved: bipedal, spiny backed, high jumping, red eyed, blood sucking creatures. Often an alien from space component accompanied these stories; speculations that "chupie" was an alien, or alien "pet." Other speculations: that the creature was a government experiment gone horribly awry. More prosaic explanations offered: an undiscovered bat, or animal of some type unknown to science.

But in none of the above accounts the chupacabras was said to look like a hairless dog or raccoon.

For whatever reasons, the evolution of the chupacabras story has morphed from the glowing red eye spine backed bipedal creature to a mangy dog like creature, at least here in the states. Monster Quest has gone with this idea:



There isn't any comparison between the two creatures and yet it seems to have taken off; that this hairless, canine type animal is a chupacabras. One question is, why have the chupie stories morphed?

Something that is as important as the chupacabras mystery is the fact that there are hairless beasties found in the southwest. These are real creatures (and I'm not implying the earlier chupacabras are not) and, whatever they are, they are. Something is causing animals to loose all their fur; what? Why are there seemingly a large number of animals with this condition? Something's causing them to loose all their fur. And if these animals are hard to identify: fox, dog, coyote, raccoon, etc. what are the implications of that? Does this mean it's simply a matter of difficulty in identifying completely hairless creatures? Or is there some type of mutation going on? Are parasites, pollution, diet,  or some other cause responsible for these cases of mange, or whatever it is?

These animals currently being called chupacabras are not chupacabras, except in local lore parlance. What is causing a large population of animals to lose their fur? It's a symptom of something, a signal that we seem to be ignoring.

Related posts:
Two Chupacabras


Visit my blog Regan Lee Oregon

Weird Bigfoot Dream

I have a post up at my Mothman Flutterings blog, about turkey vultures and a strange dream I had about Bigfoot.

Speaking of Animals Gone Mad: Black Squirrels

The black squirrel, an aggressive squirrel taking over the planet and behaving badly all around, in Engladn and elsewhere:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_
article_id=561946&in_page_id=1770&ito=1490