Wise Country 'chupacabra' actually a young raccoon

Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010
By BILL MILLER

Folks in Wise County wondered for the past week whether they had captured a legendary chupacabra, that legendary creature of south-of-the-border lore believed to suck the blood from the livestock it attacks.

Turns out it’s a raccoon.

A small, hairless animal was found dead Jan. 13 by a maintenance worker at Runaway Bay Golf Course near Lake Bridgeport.

A state biologist who examined it Tuesday said that the animal was a male raccoon, probably no more than a few months old.

How he lost his hair, however, is still a mystery.

"It was a raccoon, no doubt about it," said Jennifer Barrow, the biologist. "It’s feet were a real giveaway. It had long toes, narrow feet . . . everything right for a raccoon."

But Barrow, who works for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, didn’t stop there.

She compared the shape of the animal’s head to that of a bleached raccoon skull, and they matched. The animal’s "dental formula" was also similar to that of a raccoon, she said.

Nevertheless, news of the creature garnered Wise County a ton of publicity. Plug the word chupacabra into a search engine, and the story appears on thousands of Web sites.

Texas, it seems, has long been the epicenter for "chupe" sightings in recent years.

In 2004, the hairless, doglike "Elmendorf Beast" was spotted near San Antonio, soon followed by two more sightings in the same area.

There was another sighting a year later near Coleman and then, in 2007, a batch of them were seen or killed near Cuero in DeWitt County.

Tests performed on some of the carcasses indicated that the animals were coyotes infected with sarcoptic mange, a scabby skin malady that can rid an animal of its hair.

But Wise County’s hairless raccoon was healthy, leaving Barrow to speculate how he lost his coat.
"He didn’t appear to be sick — except that he was dead," she said. "But he wasn’t skinny. It had real smooth skin."

Barrow said the raccoon might have fallen into nearby Lake Bridgeport during freezing weather, killing him. The cold water also could have preserved him, Barrow suggested. And, after an extended period, the cold water caused his hair to fall out.

Barrow said she has been hearing about chupacabras since she became a biologist in the 1990s, "but it was usually just for a joke."

"I guess," she concluded, "the legend has been perpetrated again — at least for a little while."

http://www.star-telegram.com/local/story/1909674.html
(Submitted by Caty Bergman)