August 16, 2011
This week the “Mystery Beast” stalking Prince George’s County, Maryland, since June 1st, was captured briefly, so it could be photographed. (Prince George’s County is a county located in the U.S. state of Maryland, immediately north, east, and south of Washington, DC. As of 2010, it had a population of 863,420.)
The animal is being called a “Chupacabras” by some locals, frequently seen near Prince George’s Hospital, and thus earned the label “Prince Chupa.” (Prince George’s Hospital Medical Center is located in Cheverly, Maryland.)
Some remarkably silly things are being quoted in the press about this animal:
“It’s a kangaroo, dog, rat mixed,” X-ray technician Joe Livermore said. “It’s got a rat tail and a head like a deer. I don’t know what it is.”
Livermore decided to trap it, photograph it, and release it. He passed along the images to the local media. Apparently no DNA samples were taken by the hospital technician.
The animal is obviously a canid with mange, a class of persistent contagious skin diseases caused by parasitic mites, which results in the loss of hair. Most often, the mange being seen in these so-called “Chupacabras” cases is caused by an infestation of Sarcoptes scabiei canis, a burrowing mite found in dogs, coy-dogs, foxes, and coyotes.
Credit NBC Washington.
A similar mangy canid was photographed near Joppa, Maryland, in 2004 (see below), and Prince George looks like a twin of the mangy dogs and coyotes misidentified as Texas and Oklahoma Chupacabras, at bottom, all the time.
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.
Filed under Breaking News, Chupacabras, Cryptid Canids, CryptoZoo News, Photos, Weird Animal News