Jerry Ayer, a teacher at the Blanco Taxidermy School in Blanco, Texas, told TV station KSAT that he’s never seen anything like it.

“Different, that’s for sure, very interesting,” said Ayer.

The find comes amid a number of strange sightings in the area. The animal is gray in color with leathery, hairless skin and large fangs.

“The front legs seem to be a little bit longer than a typical coyote, very irregular and never seen any that have legs like that,” said Ayer.

Similar animals have been spotted across the country and deep in South America.

“I don’t know what to call it, I’ll just call it a chupacabra too,” Ayer told KSAT.

He said he came across the animal because a former student of his didn’t know what it was either and sought advice.

“It got into his cousin’s barn and they thought maybe it was a rodent tearing things up, and they had no idea since they’ve never seen it,” said Ayer. “He got out some poison, and this is what they got the very next day.”

Ayer said he plans to preserve the animal with taxidermy. He also said he hopes a local museum will take it for display so everyone can marvel at the strange animal.

“It’s definitely something I don’t want to throw away,” said Ayer. “I think it will be an interesting mount and a tremendous conversation piece.”

The mythical beast also found its way into popular culture and television. CNN’s Ed Lavandera called the chupacabra the “bigfoot of Latino culture.” The animal gets its name from Spanish, chupacabra literally means “goat sucker.”

Back in March 2007 Angel Palacios,  one of the workers at a bird breeding farm in Metepec Mexico was setting up rat traps around the farm to control the  problems they had been having with pests that often left  half eaten eggs and chicks. The traps were the equivalent of a mini  bear trap and so far very effective.  On a  good night they would catch 10-15 rats or sometimes a few more. The morning after setting up the traps Angel Palacios found what he thought was a bald sphinx rat in the trap and tossed into the bucket with the others, (finding that kind of rat was not a surprise since they used them to feed some of the birds of prey at the farm and some of them had escaped several months ago) what was unusual was the bizarre appearance of the rat, which, despite its small size and wounds, would not cease to writhe. Long story short, once inside the shed, he took the rat out of the bucket and saw the “rat” more carefully, then the first moment of brilliance took place: He took the trapped animal and put it on the table to scare a co-worker who hated rats, when the co-worker came in, the second greatest moment of brilliance took place: out of anger for the prank and fear for the grotesque animal the prank victim took the trap by the chain a dumped the animal inside a bucket full of tanning liquid while his the workers were laughing outside the shed.

A few hours later the co-workers came in looking for the rat which they found inside the bucket, already dead and slightly swollen due the the chemicals. The next day the workers showed the dead rat to the farm’s veterinarian/owner Mario Moreno Lopez, who, upon closer inspection saw that many of the characteristics  the animal had did not match any of the local fauna. His findings were the following:

-Very high cranial capacity relative to its size

-Ape-like skeleton as well as carnivore-like teeth

-A long tail more similar to a spider monkey’s

Intrigued, the owner showed the remains to a few fellow veterinarians who also failed to  identify the animal. Then the news reached the ufologist Jaime Maussan and more tests were made, all of them inconclusive. DNA did not match any known species yet, the CT scans confirmed the remains were from biological origin with bone structure, skin, muscle and organs.

Reality Check

Now, let’s see, the best thing two farm workers can do with a new species specimen is play pranks with each other then dump it into chemicals?

For the sake of argument let’s just blame that one on ignorance. Then, Maussan, who happens to be a relatively controversial and unreliable figure in Mexico (often ridiculed by fellow non-ufologist-journalists, common practice which also happens to people like George Knapp) Maussan comes into the equation and turns the discovery into a media event rather than looking for a well known University to analize the remains (He claims, however, the tests were made by well known Mexican researchers and even people from History Channel’s Monster Quest  became involved)

Now, here is the greatest contradiction of them all: If so many conclusive tests have been made, how come one picture wonders such as the alleged “Montauk Monster” receive much more attention?

You go figure. We could be dealing with just decomposing racoons and  dried out marmosets or something more bizarre, but that would be hard to say, especially when their media circus  shines its lights on everything but conclusive tests.

A few extras to the story:

The months following the capture of the goblin-rat were (allegedly) full of unusual occurrences such as:

-A sharp increase of the number of  predatory attacks but also the odd mutilation of a fully grown bird of prey (especially since eagles are unlikely to be preyed upon by rats and eaten alive inside a locked cage)

-Two more sightings of slightly larger goblin-like rats measuring approximately 2 ft /60 cms.

-The alleged death of the farm owner in a fire that extensively damaged the property.

Sometimes mass media makes reality stranger than truth.

Media Links:

Video 1 (English)

Video 2 (Spanish)

Video 3 (Spanish)

Video 4 (Japanese)

PS

Special thanks to Daniela Conde for the Spanish to English translation and transcripts from the videos. (You rock girl!)

Cruuuunch! Cryptotank!

At least that is what these folks seem to think, the plan is  simple:

Go to a remote area in the Gobi deset in Mongolia, look for the

famous death worm “allghoi khorkhoi” which can, as villagers say,

grow as big as a man, has the appearance of a bloody intestine,

has the uncanny ability to kill people/camels/horses from far away

with poison or with electric shocks and has eluded capture for decades.

At least until now when an expedition may seriously spend 20k on this

stomper (yes, 20k ) to kill and then document the worm and any other

elusive creatures.

Death Worm (soon to be stomped before discovery)

The legend of the giant worm was first recounted to the western world by the late Russian paleontologist and man of adventure Ivan Yefremov, who inspired explorers such as Ivan Mackerle from the Czech Republic to venture several times into the mongolian desert in search for the mythical creature (1990, 1992 and 2004 respectively).

Ivan Mackerle and his partners have not found the elegendary creature yet but if they go for the tank option, they may only find the cryptopieces…(so much for a discovery)

For more details before the worm goes extinct go to Cryptmundo !