A couple in Ratcliffe, Texas, has captured a creature that they believe may prove the existence of the mythical chupacabra.
Jackie Stock says her husband, Bubba, found a strange-looking animal eating corn in a tree Sunday night and managed to contain it.
When trying to identify the species, Stock noticed the animal’s hairless back, large claws, countless teeth and ferocious growl. He came to one conclusion:
“He called me to come and look, and I said ‘Bubba that looks like a baby chupacabra,’” Stock told CrossroadsToday.com.
Others aren’t so sure.
Phylis Canion, a nutritionist from the nearby town of Cuero, has a similar-looking creature preserved in her home that some think might also be a chupacabra.
Canion visited the Stocks and checked out their supposed chupacabra. She noticed some significant differences between the animal and her “Texas Blue Dog.”
“The feet definitely belong to a raccoon,” Canion told The Huffington Post. “Also, its eyes are brown where mine has blue eyes.
“I don’t know what it is, but I’d like to analyze its DNA,” she said.
Canion said Stock is working with a veterinarian to get that sample, but Stock’s neighbor, Arlen Parma, doesn’t agree with the raccoon hypothesis.
“You know, I hunted raccoons for twenty years with dogs and all that, and I’ve never seen anything that looks like that right there,” Parma said, according to KHON2.com. “A raccoon don’t make that noise, or a possum. What makes that noise? I guess a Chupacabra does, I don’t know.”
Brent Ortego, a Wildlife Diversity Biologist with Texas Parks and Wildlife, believes the caged creature is most likely a small canine, such as a coyote, dog or fox, KFOR-TV reports.
He also suspects the hairlessness is caused by mange disease, but Canion disagrees with that theory.
“There’s no hair on it, but it’s definitely not infected with mange,” she said. “There are no sores, or raw skin. It’s very docile and a sick animal is a mean animal.”
Canion says DNA tests are crucial and points to her own case.
A few years ago, she had vets at University of California Davis perform numerous DNA tests on her own chupacabra, and results suggested her animal is a hybrid of a coyote on the maternal side and a Mexican wolf on the paternal side.
Video:
