A taxidermist says that one of his students caught an “unknown” creature which he dubbed Chupacabras.

A man living north of San Antonio says he has quite the animal sitting in his freezer — and it may be a mythical chupacabra.

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 chupacabra myth began not long ago in the 1990s when eyewitnesses claimed to have seen it in Puerto Rico. Farmers there said sheep were found with puncture wounds and were drained of blood. A total of 150 farm animals were reportedly killed by the beast. Since then, sightings have been reported from Chile to Maine.

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.”

Finds like the one in Blanco have appeared on the History Channel’s “Monster Quest,” they were subsequently determined to be dogs or coyotes.

Full source: Wxii 12

Reminds me of the other Chupacabras story from texas awhile back.

From the DNA results, that turned out to be a Coyote.
It’s amazing how the media gets ahold of stories like these and they make it on the main page of CNN.com.

A little research from the journalist/reporter’s side would yield that these are either wild dogs (canis lupus familiaris) or Coyotes with a bad case of mange.