By BILL MILLER
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
Phylis Canion found a carcass near Cuero last year. DNA tests said it was a coyote or a coyote-Mexican wolf cross.
Phylis Canion found a carcass near Cuero last year. DNA tests said it was a coyote or a coyote-Mexican wolf cross.
CUERO -- The South Texas hunt for el chupacabra continues.
The dread of south-of-the-border goatherds -- chupacabra means "goat sucker" in Spanish -- became an Internet-fueled topic last summer when three hairless doglike creatures became road kill south of Cuero in DeWitt County.
Another met a similar fate May 8, this time north of Cuero. The man who claimed it turned it over to Phylis Canion, whose ranch south of Cuero is near where the original three were killed.
Canion, a nutritionist and owner of a retail sportswear shop, has become known around the world as the "Chupacabra Lady," after selling thousands of T-shirts to commemorate last summer's findings.
"The guy called me," she said, "and he said 'I got one, you want it?' So he brings it in, and I'm saying, 'Whoa, dude, this one looks like mine!'
"Now we're talking."
The South Texas version of the chupacabra mystery might have ended late last year when DNA tests requested by Canion stated that the creature was Canis latrans, or a common coyote. A few skeptics have added that sarcoptic mange probably caused the animals' hairlessness.
Perhaps, Canion said, there is no supernatural component to the legend of the fanged monster with fiery red eyes, big claws, and distinct ridge along its spine.
Maybe, she added, there's a scientific explanation for the mythical creature, which would make it a cryptid -- an animal whose existence has been reported but not confirmed.
"I never disputed that it did not have some sort of coyote in it," Canion said of the tests conducted at Texas State University at San Marcos. "What I disputed was the tests were not involved or detailed enough to tell me what else could have been in it.
"Or why it had no hair."
Another round of tests was ordered, this time at the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at the University of California, Davis, which specializes in animal forensic science.
The UC Davis lab stated that the animal was a cross between coyote and Mexican wolf.
Wolves, Canion said, sometimes have blue eyes, as did her "chupe." Peepers like that, she asserted, can reflect red in the glare of goatherds' lantern or flashlight.
Canion, a nutritionist, said the animal's diet may provide an explanation for its proclivity to suck blood. She said she lost dozens of chickens that were sucked dry of their blood.
She suggested that the animals might crave blood because of a vitamin deficiency that is being passed to their offspring.
The DNA tests did not explain why the creature had no fur except for some wisps of hair along its back. Those strands, however, could explain the back ridge in the chupacabra legend, she said.
Perhaps, Canion added, the animal carries a baldness gene.
"Could this thing be genetically hairless and it got passed on?" she asked. A pathology expert at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, however, had another explanation.
"Sarcoptic mange -- that's exactly what it is," Dr. Danny B. Pence said, referring to an infestation of tiny burrowing mites in the skin.
Canion said she wants UC Davis to test the carcass she received May 8.
"I don't know," Canion said, "maybe now we've finally found the chupacabra."
wmiller@star-telegram.com
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