Chupacabra caught in South Texas?

Chupacabra caught in South Texas?
July 31, 2007
KENS-TV

A rancher from the South Texas town of Cuero is telling a chupacabra tale, and she says she has the evidence in her freezer.
Is it a chupacabra or a grey fox?

Phylis Canion says the animal had been lurking around her ranch for years.

She said it first snatched cats, then chickens right through a wire cage.

ì[It] opened it reached in pulled the chicken head out, sucked all the blood out, left the chicken in the cage,î she said.

Canion says two dozen chickens were sucked dry. The meat, she says, was left on the bone.

Neighbors speculate the blue-colored animal that was doing all that damage was a chupacabra. The name is translated from Spanish and means goat-sucker because the creature sucks the blood of livestock.

Canion says not one, but three chupacabras were spotted outside the town in recent days. All of them, she says, were blue-skinned, had no hair and had strange teeth.

Although Canion and her neighbors feel she captured a chupacabra, others -- like State Mammalogist John Young -- say she captured a grey fox.

ìWhen mange goes untreated it causes this type of reaction. they start to itch, lose all their hair, blue grey coloration. and the animal usually dies from it,î he said.

It wasnít mange, but a car that killed the creature that Canion captured.

ìThere have been so many stories for so long. The chupacabra is a mythical thing and maybe it is, but this is somethingÖa cross between something. What? I donít know, Iíd love to find out,î she said.

So, KENS-TV took samples of the creature and sent it off for DNA testing.

Those results are due.

Meanwhile, the creatureís head, which is in Canionís freezer, will go on her homeís wall.

ìThis one hands down will draw the most attention. Because theyíre gonna say you got zebras, you got this, you got that, what is this thing here? Thatís what we call the South Texas taz devil," she said.