Even scientific tests might not quell 'chupacabra' mania

Bud Kennedy

Texas' favorite Mysterious Devil Beast is back.

This time, a college biology lab will try to end the mystery.

The story is all over the San Antonio TV news. A South Texas rancher found four weird, blue, hairless critters dead.

Right away, TV reporters said the word that brought crowds rushing to Cuero:

Chupacabra.

If you think that giant spider web east of Dallas is a big deal, then you haven't followed the TV tale of rancher Phylis Canion, 55, and her roadkill.

Canion said something was killing chickens and goats, even sucking their blood.

In South Texas, that stirred up the legend of the famous livestock-killing monster, El Chupacabras.

Then, on July 14, she found a dead beast on the highway. It weighed about 40 pounds, the size of a coyote, but this was blue and had long fangs.

It didn't take long before one of Canion's neighbors told the TV cameras, "It's a chupacabra!"

El Chupacabras -- his proper name -- is the Bigfoot of the borderlands, a mythical creature seen from Phoenix to Puerto Rico.

Similar animals turned up about three years ago near San Antonio and Lufkin. Experts examined bones from the San Antonio animal and guessed that it might have been a coyote with a horrible mange. But nothing was ever settled.

Now, one San Antonio TV station has given biologists at Texas State University in San Marcos enough DNA to identify the Cuero creature.

Professor Mike Forstner grew up in Harlingen, definitely chupacabra country.

"I've been doing science for 20 years, and all this research, and suddenly I'm making the news because I'm going to look at a dead coyote," he said by phone from the university.

Some fellow scholars are already laughing at him, he said. But Texas State specializes in research on rare or endangered species, he said.

"I'm the Rodney Dangerfield of science around here," he said. "But I think this is exactly what we do here."

Other experts have said the only thing unusual about this animal is the amount of TV time devoted to it.

Right away, agricultural agents and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department officials called it a mangy coyote.

That hasn't stopped the San Antonio TV reporters.

One report on KENS began, "It's not a mangy coyote -- but is it a chupacabra?"

The legend only grew last weekend, when The Associated Press wired a report worldwide headlined, "Has a Mythical Beast Turned Up in Texas?"

Canion's 7C Ranch store, 7C Unlimited, is doing a booming business in T-shirts: "2007 -- The Summer of the Chupacabra."

But Forstner is pretty sure he knows what the graduate student running the DNA check will find.

"There are a lot of mythical or extinct animals that have eventually been found," he said. "That's not going to be the case this time."

The animal he has seen in photos looks like a coyote or dog relative, he said.

The student will finish the DNA study early next week, he said.

Forstner is concerned that the discovery might be sadder than a coyote with dermatitis.

"To me, it looks like a lot like some breeds of hairless dog," he said, naming the Peruvian hairless.

"What are the TV stations going to say if this turns out to be a sick pet?"

That would be tragic.

But I bet I know what the San Antonio TV stations would say:

"Was this dog the real chupacabra?"