Chupacabras of Michoacán
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 6th, 2012
“Did a legendary chupacabras kill 35 sheep in the Mexican town of Paracuaro? That’s what local citizens want to know as they ponder the mysterious deaths of their farm animals,” asks Lee Speigel at AOL/Huffington Post.
Speigel interviewed me: “Anything mysterious in Mexico is unfortunately labeled a ‘Chupacabras,’ according to Loren Coleman, director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.”
After looking at the video of the current Chupacabras story, Coleman is dubious. “I see one sheep with its neck cut. But despite what is said, all of the sheep are not dead, and the bodies do not show a great deal of mutilation,” Coleman wrote in an email to The Huffington Post.
Coleman suggests that the animals succumbed to some kind of disease rather than a predatory attack.
“As to the one eyewitness saying he saw that ‘it had fangs, claws and wings, and moved very quickly’, well, how big, what color, no drawings?”
Speigel talked to Sharon Hill who agreed, and also doubts the Chupacabras portion of the story.
The sources of the Internet story is via Ana Luisa Cid, Scott Corrales and the UFO Chronicles website. The Chupacabras of Michoacán, México is in the news.
Michoacán’s Diario ABC reported the strange deaths of 35 sheep in the town of Parácuaro. The incident occurred in the early morning hours of March 1, 2012. The boides presented claw and tooth injuries; the majority of the injuries were under the neck, as if sliced by a razor. The person who looked after the sheep pens stated that he saw the entity that attacked the animals: it had fangs, claws and wings, and moved very quickly.
Agustín Carrillo Madrigal, the owner of the sheep, said that the pen is a quarter of a hectare in size, surrounded by a 2 meter tall cyclone fence. Six rams were kept outside the pen. Three of them died there and the others turned up dead on the outside. An inspection of the perimeter did not show any opening through which they could have exited.
It should be noted that the same enclosure also contained cows, horses and pigs, which suffered no injuries at all. (Translation (c) 2012, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Ana Luisa Cid)
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I’m impressed that the Huffington Post left the “s” at the end of the singular form of the word. Usually it get left off.
There’s been a terrible drought affecting several states in Mexico, including Michoacán.
Maybe it’s a scheme to collect the insurance for animals that were about to die anyway?
Another possibility is that it’s some kind of action perpetrated by the organized crime. Maybe the (so-called) knight Templars perform some stupid ritual by killing some poor farmers’ animals –they do like to play around with plastic helmets after all– or maybe it’s just good ole fashion racketeering.
Bear in mind this is complete speculation on my part.
Could be chupacabras…