Friday, Aug. 14, 2009
El Chupacabra
This impish monster — whose name means "goat sucker" in Spanish — allegedly looks like a giant rodent with palsy, a kind of half-reptile, half-kangaroo mutant. It first drew the world's attention in 1995, when residents of the Puerto Rican town of Canovanas claimed that chupacabras were behind a spate of attacks that killed more than 150 of their livestock, each drained of its blood. Ensuing reports claiming that some chupacabras were winged like gargoyles and blinked glowing-red eyes in the dark heightened the sense of supernatural menace surrounding the creatures. Over the years that followed, chupacabra sightings continued to spread across Latin America and into the U.S., providing the popular TV show X-Files fodder for an episode.