Hood County Chupacabra Shootings

Texas had been here before. In 2004, a rancher near Elmendorf killed a hairless animal. UC Davis identified a coyote with mange. In 2007, Phylis Canion of Cuero kept a carcass that Texas State found to be a coyote. Each time, one word followed the story. Chupacabra.

Early July 2010. Northeast Hood County. A rancher heard a growl come from his barn. Officer Frank Hackett of Hood County Animal Control found the animal in an old barn. When it growled at him, he put it down. CBS 11 told it a little differently. In its version, officer Johnnie Collins cornered the creature in a barn near Cresson and shot it when it jumped toward another officer.

The animal had first been spotted on property owned by Jack Farr. "This had deer ears, big teeth and pinkish skin like nothing I've ever seen before," Farr said. He had heard of the chupacabra, but had thought it was "some sort of mythological thing." Hackett was blunter. "It was ugly, real ugly, and I'm not going to lie on that one." Was it a chupacabra? "I don't know about that one. I'm going to wait for the facts to come in. All I know is, it wasn't normal."

Then it happened again. Within 10 miles. David Hewitt, 25, shot a second animal when it came too close to his cattle. "From a distance, he looked like a hairless chihuahua, only much bigger," Hewitt said. The claws and toenails were unlike any coyote's he had seen. The tail was skinny and pointed. It "sure looks like a possum to me." KLTV called it the second supposed chupacabra spotted in Hood County in four days.

The barn carcass went into a cooler and on to Texas A&M University. A day after the kill, its skin mites were still active. At first, doctors at Texas A&M would only say it was some kind of coyote hybrid. Then Sgt. Rosemary Moninger of Hood County Animal Control reported the result. A coyote-canine hybrid. Skin mites, internal parasites, emaciation. No formal DNA report has surfaced. The finding is known through Moninger's statements to the press. No test results were found for Hewitt's animal.

By mid-July the story had gone national. The experts leaned one way. Loren Coleman of the International Cryptozoology Museum called it "your typical mangy canid," adding, "A lot of people seem unaware of how strange coyotes look without hair." Then: "What is mysterious is that the media keeps writing about them." Benjamin Radford, managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer, expected DNA to confirm sarcoptic mange. Mike Forstner, the Texas State biologist who had tested the Cuero animal, suggested a Mexican hairless dog that "may have been someone's pet."

That October, Barry O'Connor of the University of Michigan offered the wider answer. Chupacabra-like animals are coyotes heavily infested with Sarcoptes scabiei, a mite they have little evolutionary defence against. Hood County became one more Texas carcass on the list. But the witnesses' words still carry. Farr had never seen anything like it. Hewitt had never seen an animal without hair like it. And Hackett knew only one thing. It wasn't normal.