It could happen here?

[BRJC]

Monster or dog? ‘Goatsucker’ tale debated

Hunter wants DNA test for remains that may explain chupacabra legend

By Elizabeth White
The Associated Press
Aug 31, 2007

CUERO, Texas - Phylis Canion lived in Africa for four years. She’s been a hunter all her life and has the mounted heads of a zebra and other exotic animals in her house to prove it.

But the roadkill she found last month outside her ranch was a new one even for her, worth putting in a freezer hidden from curious onlookers: Canion believes she may have the head of the mythical, bloodsucking chupacabra.

“It is one ugly creature,” Canion said, holding the head of the mammal, which has big ears, large fanged teeth and grayish-blue, mostly hairless skin.

Canion and some of her neighbors discovered the 40-pound (18-kilogram) bodies of three of the animals over four days in July outside her ranch in Cuero, 80 miles (128 kilometers) southeast of San Antonio. Canion said she saved the head of the one she found so she can get to get to the bottom of its ancestry through DNA testing and then mount it for posterity.

She suspects, as have many rural denizens over the years, that a chupacabra may have killed as many as 26 of her chickens in the past couple of years.

“I’ve seen a lot of nasty stuff. I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said.



What tipped Canion to the possibility that this was no ugly coyote, but perhaps the vampirelike beast, is that the chickens weren’t eaten or carried off — all the blood was drained from them, she said.

Chupacabra means “goat sucker” in Spanish, and it is said to have originated in Latin America, specifically Puerto Rico and Mexico.

Canion thinks recent heavy rains ran them right out of their dens.

“I think it could have wolf in it,” Canion said. “It has to be a cross between two or three different things.”

She said the finding has captured the imagination of locals, just like purported sightings of Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster have elsewhere.

But what folks are calling a chupacabra is probably just a strange breed of dog, said veterinarian Travis Schaar of the Main Street Animal Hospital in nearby Victoria.

“I’m not going to tell you that’s not a chupacabra. I just think in my opinion a chupacabra is a dog,” said Schaar, who has seen Canion’s find.

The “chupacabras” could have all been part of a mutated litter of dogs, or they may be a new kind of mutt, he said.

As for the bloodsucking, Schaar said that this particular canine may simply have a preference for blood, letting its prey bleed out and licking it up.

Chupacabra or not, the discovery has spawned a local and international craze. Canion has started selling T-shirts that read: “2007, The Summer of the Chupacabra, Cuero, Texas,” accompanied by a caricature of the creature. The $5 shirts have gone all over the world, including Japan, Australia and Brunei. Schaar also said he has one.

“If everyone has a fun time with it, we’ll keep doing it,” she said. “It’s good for Cuero.”

© 2007 The Associated Press.

[bdlaw]

Dude, "Rabid" is a bad, bad, bad movie...

[BRJC]

28 days later. . . .

[jennymayla]

God help the little critter monster living over at Missa's.

[Bobblehead]

28 days later. . . .

[RB]

From 6/20/07:

Florida Man Strangles Rabid Bobcat
(AP) WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. Dale Rippy says he was acting on instinct when a rabid 25-pound bobcat attacked him on his porch in this central Florida suburb.

Rippy, 62, endured the bobcat's slashes and bites until it clawed into a position where he could grab it by the throat. Then he strangled it.

Rippy said it was clear the crazed bobcat had to be stopped.

"I was bleeding everyplace," the Vietnam veteran said of the May 30 attack. "If that cat had attacked a child, it would've been really bad. It wouldn't have quit."

Rippy's neighbors in this suburb 25 miles northeast of Tampa called for help. Tests showed the dead bobcat was rabid. Rippy was treated for exposure to rabies, and several bites and cuts.

Authorities praised Rippy for clear thinking under pressure.

"We give this guy a lot of credit for what he did," said Pasco

County Animal Control Manager Denise Hilton. "The man was definitely using his head when he did that. If he let the cat go, we could have had more victims."

(© 2007 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. )

[Pinky]

 

[DarkMoment]

Dat you Pinko?

Woman Kills Raccoon With Her Bare Hands
By Associated Press
Thu Aug 9, 11:14 PM

CHESHIRE, Conn. - A woman killed a raccoon with her bare hands Thursday when the animal attacked a young boy. Officials with Cheshire animal control say the woman was walking in the woods around 11 a.m. with a group of children when the animal bit the 5-year-old son of a friend.

She pulled the raccoon off the child, told the children to run home and strangled the animal, authorities said.

"She had the presence of mind to choke it," animal control officer April Leiler told the Record-Journal of Meriden. "She is one tough lady."

The carcass was taken to a state laboratory in Hartford where it tested positive for rabies.

The woman and the boy are undergoing rabies treatment. Their names have not been released.

[bdlaw]

Looks like a partner I used to work for... 

[Bobblehead]

[bdlaw]

[Bobblehead]

I kid you not, they sell that fish, whole, with head attached, to eat, at Whole Foods in Edgewater. Nasty looking fish, but I hear it's tasty. So, meh.

[glx]

Farm yields a monster far from home
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
BY JOHN HOLL
Star-Ledger Staff
The rotting skull with the menacing teeth was certainly not human, and it did not look like it belonged to anything else of this planet -- or at least nothing anyone would ever want to face alive.

But there it was, outside of a fox den on Susan Goeckeler's farm in Hunterdon County. It was early last month, and as she walked the Kingwood property with her two dogs, the skull was staring up with a toothy smile.

"It unnerved me," Goeckeler said. "I didn't know what it was. More importantly, I didn't know what could have killed it."

Goeckeler's 13-year-old son took it to school, where his science teachers were stumped. So were the teachers at the local high school.

Eventually, Goeckeler took pictures of the skull to state wildlife officials, who could only scratch their heads.

In the end, the skull -- about the size of an adult human male's -- was determined to be from a wolf fish, also known as a wolf eel, found in deep waters of the North Atlantic and more commonly in the Pacific Ocean.

They are rarely, if ever, found in Hunterdon County.

The fanglike teeth are about three-quarters of an inch long, followed by a row of lower, more rounded teeth that measure about a half inch. Attach it to a thick, snakelike body that can grow up to 7 feet long and weigh up to 40 pounds and you have a prehistoric-looking creature of Captain Nemo proportions.

John G. Lundberg, curator of the Ichthyology Department at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, ultimately identified the remains. He said the biggest question he has is: "How did the fox get it?"

The Goeckelers' farm is about a mile from the Delaware River, but the creatures do not live in fresh water.


Despite their appearance, they are pretty docile creatures, said Jim Burke, director of animal husbandry at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Ore.

They typically live in reefs, mate with the same partner for several years and are more likely to retreat into their dens than swim with divers.
 
But, Burke warns, they have "extremely crushing jaws," powerful enough to crack sea urchins and crabs in half. Anyone trying to feed one could lose a hand.

"I wouldn't urge anyone to pet them in the wild, either," Burke said.

In the Atlantic, the wolf eel is fished commercially in waters from Greenland to the mid-Atlantic states. New Jersey is roughly the southernmost point of their range.

And while they rarely appear on menus in the United States, dishes with wolf eel as a main ingredient are popular in Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and in parts of Canada.

In the month or so it took to identify the skull, Goeckeler said people in the neighborhood were starting to worry. Especially after a neighbor's cat was killed near where the skull was found.

"We have 600 acres of undeveloped property back there," she said. "We had no idea what could be living inside."

Goeckeler said the rest of the eel's remains were never found.

Eventually, she said, the family would like to keep the skull, adding to its collection that already includes snake skins, deer skulls and antlers.

But before that, Lundberg said he hopes to put the skull on display along with a full wolf fish skeleton the academy acquired in the 1900s. It's unclear when that would happen.

"It's not totally dried out," Lundberg said. " It's still definitely has a rotten fish aroma to it. It's pretty rank."

[CeeDub]

I have always done this, even on early Saturdays, going in for quarters with serious bed-head, at my local bank.  On the road, hell yeah.  And carrying into a bank always racked me up a little bit . . .

It's just courteous, no different than shifting in your seat to accomodate a server at dinner.  Why freak out the teller ("who is this creep")?  And maybe you'll avoid the possibility of mistaken identity.

Why do we need to codify basic rules of human interaction?  Is it too many cultures dooming together, with no dominant code of behavior?

Oh, the hegemony - or lack thereof!!

[Mr_Grieves]

Use this space to post your weird news items which hopefully won't happen here...



The latest sign on your local bank:  No guns, no hats permitted inside.
 
June 13, 2007
Seeking a Bank Robber With a Taste for Hats
By NATE SCHWEBER

FLORHAM PARK, N.J., June 12 — You have to tip your hat, literally, to the man who has robbed 17 banks in northern New Jersey since last fall.

Because the man, known as the Hat Bandit and the Mad Hatter, has covered his head differently every time he has robbed a bank in Essex, Union, Morris and Middlesex Counties, the Hudson City Savings Bank and HSBC in this small suburban community are asking customers to enter the bank bareheaded.

"Please remove all head-coverings, caps, hats and hoods," a sign on the door of the Hudson City Savings Bank instructs.

Since last September, the gray-haired, blue-eyed man with the varying headgear has made off with about $75,000, leading the police to visit each of the 11 banks here and ask them to make the request of customers.

Most bank security cameras are mounted near the ceiling, Lt. Robert Treiber of the Florham Park police said on Tuesday, and for that reason, "We can't make out his face because of these hats."

Lieutenant Treiber said the hats-off idea emerged in brainstorming sessions among more than a half-dozen law enforcement agencies in the area, and that they had asked — but not ordered — the banks to comply.

So far, only Hudson and HSBC have passed the request along to customers.

On Tuesday afternoon, many people who entered the Hudson City Savings Bank did not remove their hats.

But the branch manager, Nick Bruno, was not discouraged, saying that he expected people over time to remove their hats as a courtesy, and that anyone who did not would be "looked at more closely."

"It's like if you don't take off your hat during the 'Star-Spangled Banner' at a ballgame," Mr. Bruno said. "People are going to look at you."

To date, the man has robbed seven banks in Union County, five in Morris County, three in Essex County and two in Middlesex County, according to the Union County prosecutor's office, and his fashion accessories have included a knit cap, a fisherman's hat and an array of baseball caps.

And after several months, the police say they may be closing in on a suspect. When he robbed a Commerce Bank in Montclair on June 1, a security camera mounted behind a teller's head, a suggestion from Police Chief David Sabagh, captured his face.

An assistant Union County prosecutor, Eileen Walsh, said that the photograph was now hanging on bank walls throughout the region, and added that many leads had come in as a result of several segments on the television program "America's Most Wanted."

But Ms. Walsh said on Tuesday that she did not know how much the no-hat rule would help.

"You don't need a hat to rob a bank," she said. "He could become the bareheaded bandit. Who knows?"

• Tweet