The Vera chupacabras: a mummified cat in Rosario

By 2013 the chupacabras had a long record of bodies. Most of them turned out to be known animals. In Texas they were mostly mangy coyotes and dogs, confirmed by DNA work such as Mike Forstner's 2007 test. Argentina was about to add one of its own.

Vera sits in northern Santa Fe Province, 256 km from the city of Santa Fe. In a field near the town, beside a post, Ezequiel Fernández came across a small dead animal. He was a livestock transporter. No date was ever given for the find, only that it came about two and a half years before the story broke.

The family kept it. For all that time it stayed at their home on Esteban De Luca al 2500, in southern Rosario, about 350 km from Buenos Aires. As if it were a pet.

In September 2013 the family showed it to the press. Stella Maris Fernández, Ezequiel's mother, held a degree in biological sciences and had studied agronomy. "Es lo más parecido a un ser extraterrestre que he visto en mi vida," she told Télam. The closest thing to an extraterrestrial she had seen in her life.

The skin was dried and intact. The head was oval, with small ridges on top. The ears were shaped like leaves, and the nostrils were visible. The mouth was open, with a full set of teeth and long fangs. The claws had five digits, and there was a tail.

Neighbours from southern Rosario came to the house to see it. Some thought it was a young chupacabras. Others suggested a weasel, or a bat without wings, though it did not really look like either. She wanted a scientific institution to say what this horrible creature was.

The story moved fast. Télam carried it on 2 September 2013. EFE took it to Spain, Mexico, Uruguay, Ecuador and Colombia. One headline said the strange creature was going around the world.

Then an answer came from Rosario itself. The head of Museology and Taxidermy at the Museo Provincial de Ciencias Naturales Dr. Ángel Gallardo, named as Jorge Martí in one account and José Martí in another, examined the specimen. His finding was simple. A naturally mummified cat.

A later column in Las2orillas added more. Zootechnicians and vets from Buenos Aires said preliminary tests pointed to a feline. Samples went to the Universidad Nacional de La Plata for DNA testing, in the hope of confirming the specialists. No result was ever published. The same column claimed a daughter of the family had been contacted by NASA through the internet, a claim no other source repeats.

No one accused the family of a hoax. The animal was real. The open jaws, the bared fangs, the prominent claws had simply been preserved as the body dried.

The Vera specimen now sits in the long line of chupacabras bodies that turned out to be familiar animals, and Wikipedia's Chupacabra article lists it there. The press moved on after September 2013. Its whereabouts were never reported again.