Roadkill in Cuero breathes life into legend of creature
The Associated Press
CUERO -- Phylis Canion lived in Africa for four years. She has 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 of 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 with 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, 90 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.
She suspects, as have many rural denizens over the years, that the chupacabra may have killed up to 26 of her chickens in the last couple of years.
What tipped Canion to the possibility that this was no ugly coyote, but perhaps the legendary creature, 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.
But what folks are calling a chupacabra is probably just a strange dog, said veterinarian Travis Schaar of the Main Street Animal Hospital in nearby Victoria.
