(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
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