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Mystery
Creatures
by Murray Montgomery |
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Recently
I came across a story from Fox News that really got me to thinking
about all the things in this old world that cannot be readily explained;
even by modern science or the so-called experts. This particular article
was headlined, “Maine mystery beast possibly killed by car.” Anything
with the word “mystery” in it gets my attention right away.
It seems that this particular creature is believed to be responsible
for frightening residents, killing dogs, and being the subject of
local legend for half a generation. According to Fox News, for the
past 15 years residents in Androscoggin County have reported seeing
and hearing a mysterious animal with chilling monstrous cries and
eyes that glow in the night.
A woman saw the beast in her yard and told a Maine newspaper that
it looked liked a hybrid mutant of something. “It was evil, evil looking.
And it had a horrible stench I will never forget,” she said. “We locked
eyes for a few seconds and then it took off. I’ve lived in Maine my
whole life and I’ve never seen anything like it.” The woman’s husband
said it looked “half-rodent, half-dog” to him.
Other folks who saw the animal described it as being charcoal gray,
weighing between 40 and 50 pounds with a bushy tail, a short snout,
short ears and curled fangs hanging over its lips. One man said it
looked like “something out of a Stephen King story.” And to think
this thing was reportedly hit and killed by a car while chasing a
cat. Don’t you know that cat is having some bad dreams?
Without even seeing the beast, wildlife officials in Maine have decided
that it’s a rare wolf-dog hybrid. However, at this point no one is
really sure.
Now you’ve got to admit this is some mighty interesting stuff. So
interesting to me that I decided to do a search on the Internet for
more stories about mystery creatures. And it seems that not long ago,
Fox News had this headline on one of their articles: “Eleven-Hundred
Pound ‘Hogzilla’ Killed in Georgia.”
They report that this hog which was killed in the suburbs of Atlanta
was even bigger than the near-mythical “Hogzilla” caught in rural
South Georgia a few years ago. A team from National Geographic confirmed
that South Georgia’s “Hogzilla” was indeed real. It was seven and
one-half to eight feet long and weighed 800 pounds. That means the
hog killed near Atlanta is 300 pounds bigger. An editor with Georgia
Outdoor News said, “Nobody keeps official records, but it’s one heck
of a hog.”
Not
to be outdone, Texas also has its share
of mystery creatures. One of the most famous being the “Chupacabra.”
Although considered mythical by most, there are many people who believe
that this creature does exist. The first reported sighting was in
Puerto Rico in 1947 and since then it allegedly has been seen in Mexico,
Chile, Brazil, and the United States. According to one online dictionary,
the Chupacabra,
which means “goat sucker” in Spanish, has also been spotted in Maine
as well as Texas.
Once again, however, the so-called experts say that the Chupacabra
is only legend, although many in the Latin American communities believe
it to be real. I wonder, how do you claim something isn’t real or
doesn’t exist if you’ve never seen it? Evidently some folks have seen
something they can’t explain; that doesn’t necessarily mean they are
wrong.
And consider this, recently the NBC affiliate in Dallas/Ft. Worth,
Channel Five, ran a story about a mystery creature found in the Lufkin
area. On their website, they were also running a close-up photo of
the animal’s teeth which include large fangs. “Some people in the
southeast Texas town say the creature is a Chupacabra
– a mythical creature sporting large fangs that sucks blood from its
prey,” the report stated.
Last year a rancher in South
Texas shot an animal that had been killing his livestock. The
description of which is very similar to the beast found in Lufkin
. I also came across the same kind of reports from Maryland and elsewhere
in the United States. In fact, just this past summer (2007) a lady
in Cuero,
Texas, claims to have a Chupacabra
in her possession. It was one ugly varmint and the story made all
the local papers. She had Texas State University run a DNA test on
the thing and the results were very vague. They pretty much speculated
that it was a coyote with the mange but they weren’t really sure.
Unexplained things do exist and there are many instances where the
so-called experts are too quick to call a considerable number of people,
“liars.” They might not be quite as cocky if they happened to be lost
on some dark, foggy night in southeast Lavaca County and made a face-to-face
encounter with the “Wild Woman
of the Navidad.”
© Murray Montgomery
Lone
Star Diary
December 24, 2007 Column
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