The Elmendorf Beast

Elmendorf is a small community in southern Bexar County, Texas, just south-east of San Antonio. In spring 2004, a farmer named Devin McAnally began losing chickens. Something was killing them. The birds appeared to have been drained of blood, the meat left untouched. At one point, 35 chickens were said to have vanished in a single day.

The visitor came more than once. A strange, bluish varmint, wandering onto the property. In one account, McAnally recalled the moment his terrier raised the alarm: "I heard her (terrier) barking a very unusual bark… I looked out the window, and there was this little odd-looking animal about 20 yards away eating mulberries under a tree."

One morning, McAnally crept up on it with a rifle. He fired. The animal fell.

Up close it was stranger still. About 20 inches tall and 30 inches long. About 13 pounds in one account, 20 in another. Bluish-grey skin, nearly hairless, with spots on the hide and sparse hair. A severe overbite. Fangs of 3 inches extending downward from the upper jaw, 1.5-inch fangs protruding upward from the lower. Tiny feet. A rat-like tail. Earthfiles noted no bleeding at the bullet wound site.

McAnally photographed the carcass and posted the picture at De Leon's Market. Older residents looked at it and offered a word. Chupacabra. The San Antonio Express-News carried the story, and Linda Moulton Howe reported it for Earthfiles. Even the date grew slippery. Accounts place the shooting in May, July or August 2004.

San Antonio Zoo staff examined the remains. John Gramieri thought the skull "resembled that of a coyote" and suggested a canid, perhaps a dog and coyote hybrid, with a very bad skin condition. Other zoo comments pointed to a Mexican hairless dog.

Whitley Strieber, who lives in the area, paid for DNA tests. Tissue went to the UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory, and samples reportedly went to labs in Quebec, New York City and Texas. The results are reported inconsistently. Some accounts say a coyote with mange. Others call the DNA inconclusive. One later report says "a feral, domestic dog of some sort." A University of Texas mammalogist told the Discovery Channel it was a coyote with mange.

The debate settled on a canid with severe mange. Biologist Barry O'Connor argued in 2010 that US chupacabra reports were mange-infected coyotes, marked by "little fur, thickened skin, and a rank odor." Speaking of a later Texas case, Loren Coleman put it simply: "A lot of people seem unaware of how strange coyotes look without hair." Benjamin Radford pointed to a veterinarian who examined 300 alleged chupacabra victims in Puerto Rico and found they had not been bled dry. Other theories circulated too. A wolf and coyote hybrid. A monkey. A muntjac deer. An escaped lab experiment. Nobody accused McAnally of a hoax.

October 2004. In Pollok, East Texas, Stacey Womack's brother shot a hairless grey animal under the family house. The Express-News asked whether creatures killed 250 miles apart could be chupacabras. More followed. Cuero in 2007. Dash-cam footage in DeWitt County in 2008. Medina County in 2009. Hood County in 2010. The Elmendorf Beast was the first well-known Texas chupacabra carcass. It set the pattern for all of them.