Don't let science suck the life out of Chupacabra story

John Kass
March 31, 2011

Once again, the cynics are going out of their way to debunk the existence of the Chupacabra, the hairless, bloodsucking vampire, or goat sucker, as it is affectionately called.

As millions of Americans know, it often sidles up to its victims, then rises on its naked haunches, before it feeds.

But now comes Benjamin Radford, managing editor of something called Skeptical Inquirer science magazine. His aim? To debunk the noble creature.

"I would say it's no more or no less as real as Santa Claus," Radford recently told KRQE, an Albuquerque, N.M., TV station.

Really, Mr. Radford? How sad. How nauseating. How utterly predictable.

And how positively dangerous for American taxpayers, if Mr. Radford and his cynics are able to convince us there's no such thing as a bloodsucker.

Let me tell you something, mister. As a newspaperman who often deals with politicians, I can tell you for a fact that Chupacabras do exist. I've seen them hard at work, drawing nourishment from millions upon millions of defenseless beings, gorging while making happy noises deep in their throats.

And if you ever caught them feeding and dared try to stop them, they'd probably pull a Sen. Chuck Schumer on you and call a news conference to shriek that those who would deny them nourishment are being "unreasonable" and "too extreme"!

Yes, the Chupacabras are often vicious. And yes, it is also true that for years I've wished to own one as a pet, to keep on a silver chain for my amusement.

But Radford isn't interested in what I want. He's the author of a new book, "Tracking the Chupacabra," as if I'll ever purchase a volume.

Radford, whom I have absolutely no intention of ever interviewing in my lifetime, wasted five precious years of his life hoping to trace the roots of the beast.

The reason?

He wanted to find the source of it, in the hopes of killing it in our collective mind, and thus rendering it extinct.

"It doesn't matter what I write," whined Radford to ABC recently. "It doesn't matter that I solve this. People are still going to see a weird hairless thing, and someone is going to call it a Chupacabra."

Or perhaps they'll call it a Schumer.

Radford says people like mysteries and have been fascinated by the idea of a beast that sucks goats' blood. "It captures the public's imagination," he said.

His quest begins with Ms. Chupacabra herself, Madelyne Tolentino, of Puerto Rico.

In 1995, Tolentino stunned the world by saying she'd spotted the vampire near her home. She described the creature as a biped, about 3 to 5 feet tall, with red or black eyes, skinny arms and spikes down the back. The Chupacabra had no ears and had small air holes instead of a nose.

The story aired in 1995 on "Cristina" — the Oprah Winfrey of Spanish-language television.

And soon, Chupacabra sightings popped up in Puerto Rico. Later the beasts were spotted elsewhere in Latin America, and the southwestern United States. Two were thought to have been shot dead in Texas in 2010, but these turned out to be dogs who lost their hair to strange mites.

Weirdly enough, no Chupacabra has ever been officially spotted in Washington, D.C., perhaps because they blend in so easily with all the other bloodsucking creatures.

Naturally, Radford also blames the media for promoting the Chupacabra phenomenon.

So, as his story goes, he interviewed Tolentino and got her to reveal a damning "fact":

That shortly before she confessed to seeing the Chupacabra in 1995, she'd seen the sci-fi movie "Species." The descriptions, he said, of the creature in "Species" and her "post-Species" Chupacabra were more than coincidental.

"To me," Radford was quoted as saying, "that was the smoking gun. It can't be coincidence, but this Chupacabra that's now popping up around the world just happened to look exactly like the monster in the sci-fi film."

Perhaps.

According to the equally credible Wikipedia, the film starring fine actors like Ben Kingsley and Forest Whitaker, "is about a group of scientists who try to track down and trap a killer alien seductress before she successfully mates with a human male."

The statuesque and somewhat blond Natasha Henstridge is the alien, who wears sexy clothes including (as I vaguely remember it) a skin-tight black cat suit. And she's also quite deadly in bed.

But in the interest of accuracy, I consulted the IMDb website, which offered the following review, which "30 of 37 people found helpful."

"For some reason, a quality cast … signed up for this knockabout trash about an escaped alien-human hybrid in a search of a mate … and is little more than an excuse for a few car chases and many sightings of Natasha Henstridge's (bosoms)."

This may be, but focusing on Henstridge's anatomy and her female-preying-mantis-mating ritual is a complete distraction. It's also a red herring.

But it's just the kind of thing that a devious creature like the Chupacabra, and its most eager manservant, Mr. Benjamin Radford, would want us to believe.

The thing is, there is absolutely no scientific proof that just because Ms. Chupacabra watched "Species," that she also didn't see a freaky Chupacabra outside her home a couple of weeks later.

Chupacabras are indeed tricky beasts. And their greatest trick is convincing people that they're not real.

But they always leave their tracks. Just look at your tax bill, and tell me they don't exist.

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