Lake Jackson Chupacabra Sighting

By the summer of 2011, Texas had a long run of chupacabra reports behind it. Elmendorf in 2004. Cuero in 2007. Hood County in July 2010. Each time, the strange animal turned out to be a canid with mange. In Lake Jackson, in Brazoria County, Jack Crabtree knew animals better than most. He was a retired wildlife biologist, described by ABC News as "a 24-year veteran of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service." His wife, Linda Crabtree, was a retired teacher.

July 4, 2011. A family friend was visiting. Near the creek out back, a slow-moving, almost hairless animal appeared. Crabtree's first reaction, as he later told ABC13: "Look at that dog. I've never seen a dog like that." It was grey and skinny, with the shape of a dog. Its ears were long and pointy. "Most prominent feature was his ears," he said. The friend called it "the strangest dog" he had seen. Crabtree told him the local legend. "The evil animal of the night that sucks blood from the goats and chickens."

The animal crossed the yard, walked through a neighbouring field and disappeared into the brush. According to ABC News, the couple saw it again two evenings later. It seemed sick. Crabtree thought it was probably out foraging and "got caught out later than he should have." The Facts says Jack took the photos. ABC News credits Linda.

Crabtree sent the pictures to The Facts "with tongue in cheek." On July 11, 2011, they ran on the front page. The headline: "Chupacabra reportedly spotted in Lake Jackson." Inside, Crabtree played the part. "I've been around wildlife my entire life," he said. "I've just seen nothing like it." And: "It's a demonic creature that is active at night."

Within a day, the story was everywhere. Houston stations KPRC and KTRK carried it. So did ABC News, NBC News, CNN and outlets abroad.

The Facts showed the photos to two local officials. Kelly Wright, the Lake Jackson humane officer, had no doubt. "It's definitely going to be a coyote with mange." The long, pointy ears gave it away. "Anytime anything has mange, it tends to distort what they normally look like." Jim Bob Van Dyke, a Texas Parks and Wildlife game warden, disagreed and suggested a stray dog. Either way, he was not convinced. "If there was one of these, we would have seen it by now."

Crabtree soon dropped the act. "It was immediately clear to me it was a coyote with a severe case of mange," he told ABC News. "It was obviously sick." To ABC13 he called the whole affair "kind of a practical joke, a spoof, with the local paper, that got more attention than I expected it to."

The photos showed a real animal. Only the label was a joke. Crabtree set a humane trap so rehabbers could treat the animal and release it. No report says what, if anything, it caught.

ABC News used the case to interview Benjamin Radford, author of Tracking the Chupacabra, who argues that American reports are mostly mangy dogs and coyotes. A year earlier, Barry O'Connor of the University of Michigan had linked such animals to the mite Sarcoptes scabiei. "People are still going to see a weird hairless thing," Radford said. "I think the biggest answer is that people like mysteries."

Later that July, a teenager in La Salle shot a possible chupacabra, and the Lake Jackson photos were back in the news. Today the case sits in the Texas timeline of Wikipedia's chupacabra article. A biologist's joke, and a sick coyote, briefly made famous.