Cuero — the Texas chupacabra, 2007

OVERVIEW

In August 2007 Phylis Canion was told of strange remains found outside a neighbour's property in Cuero, Texas. She had spent weeks trying to photograph a creature she blamed for killing about thirty of her chickens over several years, and said she had seen three like it.

HISTORY

Canion photographed the remains and had a taxidermist preserve them, and displayed them at home. Texas State University–San Marcos tested the DNA: a coyote. A second analysis at the University of California, Davis, found a coyote–Mexican wolf hybrid. In August 2008 a DeWitt County deputy, Brandon Riedel, filmed a similar hairless animal in Cuero alleys from his patrol car; the sheriff thought it the same kind of coyote.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

EXPLAINED. Wildlife specialists say such hybrids are known and that mange explains the grey-blue, hairless skin. It is one of a run of Texas 'chupacabras' — Elmendorf 2004, Hood County 2010, and others — all identified as canids with mange.

VISITING

A small Texas town; the finds were on private property.