The Goatsuckers Are Coming! Eek!

We have another demon hound from hell! Or a goatsucker. Whatever. Last year it was the Hell Hound of Turner, Maine. Yeah, yeah, sure, we know that turned out to be a dog (despite our best efforts to get a conspiracy theory started). But now we have a Chupacabra, literally translated as "Goatsucker" near Cuero, Texas. Or at least the head of something that is being claimed to be a Chupacabra.

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.

It is a bit hard to tell from the low resolution picture that accompanies the AP article what exactly the frozen noggin might be, but it sure as heck looks canine. And blue. Much like the Turner beast was. The story quotes a local veterinarian who is pretty sure its either a bizarre mutt dog or possibly a mutation. He also thinks the "bloodsucking" is nothing really unusual. The animal may simply prefer to lap up blood rather than tear up the chickens. The chupacabra-sicle will undergo genetic testing.

Note that the chupacabra entry in Wikipedia pretty much debunks every claim made recently about the discovery of a chupacabra. Most turn out to be just dogs. The entry does miss that DNA testing in the Turner case, though.