The Chupacabra
Pronounced: Chew pah kahb rah

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Chupacabra Sightings

February 15, 2001

The Origin Of Chupacabra, is it possible?

In the past I have written articles about Chupacabra or the creature that sucks all the blood from goats.  The descriptions of the animal vary slightly but most felt it looked like a large sized rat that could fly.  Reports range from South America on through the southern United States.  A large number of reports come from Texas.  During my brief stay in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area I did not have any encounters with the monster.

People have lived in fear of this awful creature for many years.  Is this an entity whose ferocity has been blown out of proportion?  Is Chupacabra truly a menacing, blood sucking rat that has the ability to fly?  Or, is the original Chupacabra really a Whippoorwill?

The other day while sitting at my computer and listening to the television in the background I heard mention of the goatsucker.  The show was Bonanza.  The conversation was between Ben Cartwright, the patriarch of the Cartwright clan, and a Hispanic worker.  The man's explanation of the goatsucker was the Whippoorwill.  The small American bird of the goatsucker family!  The bird is approximately 10 inches long and is a mottled gray-brown and black in color.  Whippoorwills nest on the ground and fly at night in a nocturnal search for insects that they take out of the air while in flight.  The small sized bird has a weak bill and large mouth lined with bristles.  It is believed in some areas that the bird comes to herds of goats in the still of the night and will actually suck the milk out of the goats.

The term goatsucker is used to describe any bird that has a weak beak with bristles.  The bristles help the birds catch their prey in the air. It is believed their large mouths enable them to suck the milk.

Is it possible that the nocturnal flights of these small relatively harmless birds have been exaggerated into the stories of the flying rats that suck blood from goats and humans? Or could it be that the large flying rats are for real and the harmless Whippoorwill has been wrongfully accused?

The next time you hear a Whippoorwill listen very carefully.  Is he really repeating his own name over and over?  Or is he perhaps saying, "I am Chupacabra.  I am Chupacabra."

Margo, Contributing Writer

Resources:  Bonanza Television Show; Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia