Creature record / 2005
Coleman, Texas. Summer 2005. For several weeks, chickens kept dying on Reggie Lagow's property. Sometimes two a day. Lagow saw the killer once, snatching a bird in daylight. Rusty-coloured hair. Quick. Unlike anything he had ever seen. His traps failed. The animal was too smart. Then, on August 9, a neighbour's dog cornered it in a chicken coop. Dead, it looked stranger still. Hairless, with long back legs and a lengthy, thin tail. One report called it a mixture of hairless dog, rat and kangaroo. A local vet blamed mange. Lagow had his doubts. Two days later, the carcass went out with the trash.
Coleman is a small town in Coleman County, West Texas. In the weeks before August 2005, something began killing poultry there. Reggie Lagow and his neighbour Carole Burroughs lost about 30 chickens between them. Some birds were partly eaten. Others simply vanished.