You're a mean one, Mr. Grunch

I grew up in Bayou Country, the Cajun heartland south of Lafayette, Louisiana.  My mom's family was Cajun to the bone, descended from a group of exiled Nova Scotia French who had been there in those swamps for over 200 years.

Cajun folklore is fascinating, and the tales and legends preserve a memory of times long past.  My maternal uncle, who was a fine storyteller, used to scare the hell out of us kids with stories (told in French) of the loup-garou (the Louisiana answer to werewolves) and the feu follet, or "crazy fire," a forest spirit that would lure you in with dancing lights and then steal your soul.  (The only way to escape was to run away and jump across a creek -- the feu follet was unable to cross running water.)

I grew up well-versed in the terrifying legends of the swamps, having not only the family background but a taste for such paranormal scary stuff.  So imagine my surprise when just yesterday I found about a south Louisiana cryptid that I'd never heard of before:

The "grunch."

[image courtesy of artist Alvin Padayachee and the Wikimedia Commons]

Yes, I know, "grunch" doesn't sound all that authentic south-Louisiana-French.  At least it should be "grunché," or something.  But no, it's the "grunch," and apparently it's sort of a Deep South version of El Chupacabra.  Here's what "Gina Lanier, Paranormal Investigator" has to say about it:

As a principal port, New Orleans had the major role of any city during the antebellum era in the slave trade.  Its port handled huge quantities of goods for export from the interior and import from other countries to be traded up the Mississippi River.  The river was filled with steamboats, flatboats and sailing ships.  At the same time, it had the most prosperous community of free persons of color in the South. Many old stories from people who's [sic] family were around at the time have passed many oral traditions down to us concerning the Grunch.  Legend has it that the Grunch dates back to the days of New Orlean's [sic] early settlement and that its name ''Grunch'' comes from the name of a road.

So where did the the creature come from?  Was it always there, grunching about in the swamp?  No, Lanier said.  The grunch was created by the Voodoo Queen cutting off Satan's son's balls:

This Southern cryptid has been called The Vampire of Farbourgh [sic: she means Faubourg] Marigny, and Bywater area dating back to the early 1800's.  The Legend of Marie Laveau tells of how some believe this form of chupacabra came into existence. 

An old Voodoo Hoodoo story says Marie Laveau castrated the Devil Baby when he was born.  Because she wanted him to produce no more of his evil kind.  The two bloody testicles fell to the floor as she used a very sharp hoodoo voodoo blade.  Immediately they turned into a male and female grunch, who it is said actually attacked the great Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau.  The grunch are said to have almost killed her with their fierce bites and punching.  The dark evil terror the old Voodoo Queen must have been unbearable as she struggled under their great strength before she fainted.  When she awoke the Grunch and the Devil Baby were gone.  Laveau was near death after this and many have said this is when Marie Laveau gave up her Voodoo Hoodoo ways and went back to being a good Catholic woman.

Well, it's a good story, but all that voodoo hoodoo stuff sounds like doodoo to me.  As you probably figured I'd say.  Marie Laveau was a real person, though; her tomb is in the historic St. Louis Cemetery in the French Quarter, and is a tourist attraction (especially given the fact that devotees still place gifts on her grave).

But the rest of it sounds like your usual silliness.  Of course, this hasn't stopped (un)reality TV from latching onto it, as they are wont to do.  The very first episode of the Destination: America series "Swamp Monsters," in fact, is called "The Grunch."  Here's the description of the episode:

In the mystical lagoons, marshes and swamps of Louisiana’s bayou, Elliot Guidry and his team of BEAST (the Bayou Enforcement Agency on Supernatural Threats) battle the elements while tracking down a pack of the infamous Grunch.  Born of the Devil himself, the Grunch have been terrorizing Louisiana residents for centuries.  These skin and bones, dog-like creatures have ridged backs, stand three feet tall and emit a horrible screech. After following these monsters into the middle of the swamp,  BEAST realizes that the hunter has become the hunted as they’re surrounded by a hungry pack of Grunch.

I commented, in a previous post, that if ever I founded a punk band, I was gonna call it "Government Death Plague."  Now I can add that if I ever found an alternative band, I'm gonna call it "Pack of Grunch."

(You can watch the entire episode for free here, if you don't mind giving BEAST forty minutes of your life that you'll never, ever get back.)

Anyhow.  Predictably, I think the whole thing is easily explained by wild dogs and wilder imaginations.  No need for voodoo hoodoo and devil baby balls.  I still am kind of surprised I never heard about this, growing up; I certainly had an ear for such tales, and more than one family member who was willing to pass along anything that was useful for scaring kids to the near bedwetting stage.  The fact that I grew up down there and never got wind of grunches is a little like the fact that it wasn't until I moved to Seattle that I first heard of cooking "blackened pork chops" and "blackened fish" and so on, a culinary technique that allegedly comes from southern Louisiana.  The only time my mom served anything blackened was when she put a chicken in the oven to roast and got distracted by a neighbor, and only took it out when it was somewhere between overdone and charcoal.  (My dad teased her for weeks about having created a new gourmet dish, "poulet noir.")

But who knows?  I may just have missed that one.  In any case, if you're down in the bayou, you now have an additional thing to worry about, over and above cottonmouths and alligators, not to mention the feu follet and loup-garou.  I wouldn't let it stop me from going there, though.  It's a beautiful place, with great music and even better food, and if I lived there for over twenty years without being attacked by a pack of grunch, I'm guessing you're safe enough.

Winged Chupacabras and naked Sasquatches

Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch, we're keeping our eyes on two stories that will be of interest to cryptozoology buffs.

First, from Chicxulub Puerto, in the state of Yucatán, Mexico, there are reports of an "unknown big, black, ugly, and winged creature" that is terrorizing innocent citizens.

The Yucatán Times reports that a gas station worker named Alejandra was attacked last week, but that she's not the only one.  The same creature has been seen in the middle of the town, and Alejandra's coworker Julio has reported that he's heard strange whistling noises coming from the lagoon.

"All this information combined with the fact that many domestic animals have been found dead and dismembered lately in Chicxulub and surrounding areas, are generating the rumor that the 'Chupacabras' might be on the loose in this part of the State of Yucatán," said the writer for the Times. 

Admit it.  You knew it'd be Chupacabras.

This one doesn't have wings.  Maybe it's a different species of Chupacabra.

So it seems like once again we're confronted with a mystery beast who has been seen only by a couple of people, plus reports of noises that could have any number of explanations, plus some animal deaths that could be from a variety of causes.  Myself, I don't think this amounts to much, but then, I have to admit that it takes a lot to convince me.

Apparently, it was also a considerable task to convince a Washington County, Oregon man that he wasn't a Sasquatch.

KOMO News reports that 58-year-old Jeff McDonald, of Banks, Oregon, was out hunting last Thursday, when he was accosted by a naked man who proceeded to hit McDonald with a rock.

When McDonald, predictably, objected to this, the man, who has been identified as 20-year-old Linus Norgren, also of Banks, started yelling that he was the last of a long line of Sasquatches.

Okay, that explains your behavior entirely, Mr. Norgren.

An Oregonian Not-squatch

So anyway, McDonald fought off the rampaging non-Bigfoot bravely, despite the fact that Norgren continued to pelt rocks at him, and at one point, tried to strangle McDonald with a piece of clothing.  McDonald eventually triumphed, although he suffered broken fingers, bruises, and an eye injury (happily, he's expected to make a full recovery).  Once Norgren was subdued, McDonald held him at bay with his hunting rifle and blew a whistle until deputies arrived.

Norgren is now being held on charges of strangulation, assault, and menacing, with the bail set at $250,000.  Apparently the sheriff's office has looked into his antecedents, and found that he's not a Sasquatch at all, but the son of a "well-known mushroom picker."

So that clears that up, and perhaps explains Norgren's bizarre behavior.

And that's our news from the cryptozoological world,  unless you count the fact that Melba Ketchum is still at it, trying to convince the world that her Sasquatch Genome Project is producing valid science.  Her latest attempt garnered her an interview on that stalwart bastion of support for scientific research...

...Fox News.

I'm not making this up.  You should check it out.  Fox News takes every opportunity to claim that intelligent design is real and climate change is false, and then interviews a Sasquatch researcher whose results have been discredited at every turn.

Which, now that I think of it, makes some sense, doesn't it?

Jack the cuddly Chupacabra

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I had been interviewed for a podcast by a fellow named Robert Chazz Chute, a journalist and writer who was curious about how a guy who was born into a devout Roman Catholic family in southern Louisiana had ended up becoming a skeptic and atheist.  The podcast is now live -- I hope you'll give it a listen!  Check out Gordon Bonnet on The Cool People Podcasts.

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I try not to spend too much time focusing on individuals who either (1) are yearning for attention or (2) have a screw loose, or possibly (3) both, but this one was too good to pass up.

Much has been made in cryptozoological circles of El Chupacabra, the "goat sucker," a canid cryptid that apparently first was mentioned in Puerto Rico about twenty years ago.  Since that time, reports have come in from all over, largely concentrated in the southwestern United States, although there have been mentions of the beast from as far away as Siberia.  Where there has been evidence, apart from eyewitness accounts and blurry photographs, the creature in question has always turned out to be a coyote or wolf, usually with mange (a condition that makes the affected individual lose patches of hair).

So, imagine my surprise when there was a story on the bizarre site Who Forted? wherein someone said that not only is El Chupacabra real, but he has one as a pet.

The gentleman in question, one Craig R. of San Diego, thinks his pet dog is a domesticated Chupacabra.  Let's hear his argument:

Chupacabras are real..

I am sure there are generations of groups that have figured out how to live in the wild. The wild ones will of course have more exaggerated wild features.

Jack is a coated Xolo. 4 out of 5 in a litter are black skin and hairless. One out of 5 still have the black skin but they have coats (like Jack) and a full set of teeth (hairless ones are missing most of there [sic] teeth which explains the wild hairless Xolo feeding habits). Standard size of Xolo is 35 pounds. Jack is an intermediate 20 pounds. They have minis to that look like Chihuahuas.

So forget that Jack is not hairless and study the features of Jack. The paws….the teeth. Jack has elongated fangs. I play tough [sic] of war with them they are so long. Look at the nose, the head, the ears.

The Shorter front legs. The rabbit like hips.

He is pretty much a spitting image of the museum Chupacabras and pics.

I can even explain the padding on the hind end of the Texas one. They’re hip bone because he has rabbit like hips stick out on each side of the tale.

If its [sic] a wild one, they will need extra PADDING there to comfort from hard rocks and hard surface while sitting. Plus they wedge they’re hips with those bones against a vertical surface to help them curl up in a tight ball. So those pads are easily explainable...

Chupacabras are wild or feral Xolos that’s it.

The "Xolo" he's talking about is short for Xoloitzcuintle, the so-called "Mexican Hairless Dog."  Craig is right that despite the name, some members of the breed do have hair.  But as far as his pet being an exact match for the fearsome goat-sucker, as he implies, let's look at an image of an alleged Chupacabra corpse:

Then, we have El Chupacabra, as artists have pictured it, from eyewitness testimony:

Then we have... Jack.

I don't know about you, but I'm just not seeing it.

Given that genetic testing on the small number of dead Chupacabras that have been recovered (including the one pictured above) have, one and all, shown them to be sick coyotes, I just don't think I'm ready to cast myself into Craig R.'s camp just yet.  If there were any other evidence of wild packs of Xolos running around...  but right now, that's it.  Just his word, with an assurance that Jack is really a great deal fiercer than he looks.

Because, face it; doesn't Jack just look a little... cuddly to be labeled as a "goat-sucker?"  If he really was a Chupacabra, you'd think that the general reaction would be running away screaming, while all I want to do is to skritch his head.  But that's just me.  I haven't, after all, played "tough of war" with him.

So, that's today's news from the cryptozoological world.  Once again, a wild claim and nothing really much to back it up, but it's not like that's anything new.  Who knows what's next?  If this sets any kind of precedent, the next thing we know, we'll have the Yeti being characterized as "very much like a baby panda."

The Vampire Beast of Bladenboro

So, today we're going to investigate a topic that I know is weighing heavily on all of your minds: is the Vampire Beast of North Carolina back?

Yesterday, in the delightfully wacky weird news outlet Who Forted?, writer Dana Matthews tells the tale of a bizarre beast that troubled the good citizens of Bladen County, North Carolina in 1953.  Matthews says, about the first round of attacks:

In 1953 the Bladenboro Newspaper covered a story about a strange creature that had blamed for the deaths of numerous dogs, draining them of their blood. Local eyewitnesses who spotted the beast claimed it possessed the body of a bear, the head of a cat, and that when it opened its mouth to growl it made the sound of a woman screaming.

The creature then proceeded to vanish for fifty years.  Attacks didn't begin again until 2003.  This makes you wonder what it was eating all that time, doesn't it?  Be that as it may, the second round of deaths sounded pretty much like the first:

The bizarre animal exsanguination began again in 2003, only this time it seemed the creature had broadened his horizons and was now killing in a 150-miles radius beyond Bladenboro.  During its second blood-run, the Vampire Beast of North Carolina was managing to slay even the bulkiest of Pit Bulls with ease and many Bladenboro residents claimed to have found strange tracks around their dead pets that even wildlife biologists couldn’t explain.

Pretty scary stuff.  So imagine the terror of the residents when, just last week, the Vampire Beast got hungry this time after only a ten-year hiatus, and it all started up again:

According to a report by paranormal investigator Thomas Byers, on June 15^th 2013, Bladenboro, NC resident Misty Turner and her son Tyler contacted local police after something visited their farm in the dead of night, killing three of their horses and a large Bull Mastiff dog. Misty’s son Tyler found the horses after the barking dog had alerted the family to the fact that something was skulking around the property. The dog continued to bark for quite some time, obsessed with the dense wooded area alongside the farm.

Arriving police and veterinarians were shocked to discover that the horses had died from very deep puncture wounds to the neck. Even more shocking was that it seemed that the purpose of the marks was to allow the blood to be drained from the animals. The horses were also reported to have been wet with sweat, almost as if they had been running hard to avoid whatever was chasing them down.

The following evening, much to the Turner’s display, their dog was also killed in the exact same fashion, with two puncture marks to the neck, found with its blood drained. Misty claims to have seen the thing that had killed her animals as it was running from the lifeless body of her pet. Her description of the creature matched the same eyewitness reports of the Vampire Beast reported in 1953.

We are also treated to an artist's rendition of the Vampire Beast, in case your imagination hadn't been sufficiently stirred by the eyewitness description:

I'm guessing that the bats are artistic license and don't actually follow the Vampire Beast around, but I could be wrong.

Well, no offense to the people of Bladenboro, but I tend to be doubtful about all of this.  The whole story -- reports of animal killings and exsanguination, strange wounds, unnamed veterinarians and wildlife biologists admitting bafflement, a mysterious beast that is supposedly responsible -- sounds much like the alleged depredations of El Chupacabra, coupled with all of the cattle mutilation stories you hear (variously attributed to satanists, aliens, or monsters).  And I suspect that if anyone really does do a thorough investigation, the whole thing won't hold water, at least not as an "unexplained monster attack."

The problem is that ordinary animal attacks often lead to rather oddball wounds.  A study done by the Washington County (Arkansas) Sheriff's Department, in response to claims of bizarre livestock mutilation, found the following [Source]:

They placed a dead cow in a field and had observers watch what happened over the next 48 hours. When they reported that bloating led to incision-like tears in the skin and that blowflies and maggots had cleaned out the soft tissue so that the carcass looked exactly like those that had been attributed to aliens or satanic cultists, they were generally ignored by the community of true believers.

Claims of exsanguination -- removal of all of the blood from a dead or dying animal -- have never been substantiated.  According to Benjamin Radford, whose book Tracking the Chupacabra: the Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore was a finalist for the ForeWord Review Book of the Year and was called a "slam-dunk debunk" by The Skeptical Inquirer, the apparent exsanguination has a completely natural cause:

The apparent loss of blood could be explained by internal hemorrhaging and pooling of blood at the bottom of the corpse.  The attribution of the attacks on livestock to a vampiric entity can be explained by the puncture wounds resulting from the canine teeth left by most predators, who often instinctively go for the neck, according to taxidermist Jerry Ayer.

Put another way, once the heart stops pushing the blood around, the blood settles downward due to gravity, and the upper parts -- the parts immediately accessible to anyone investigating the case -- appear to be completely devoid of blood when cut open.

So, sorry to puncture your scary, monster-shaped balloon, but it looks like the Vampire Beast is just a plain old beast of some kind.  Not that this should go uninvestigated, mind you; if I had my horses killed by some large predatory animal, I'd want to do something about it.  Horses were attacked by rabid bobcats in Florida in 2010 and again in 2011 -- if I had to place a bet on what was responsible for the Bladenboro attacks, it'd be that.

Anyhow, that's our news from the cryptozoological world.  At least this story was more interesting that the latest from Melba Ketchum, who is once again blathering on about how she really did know what she was doing, there really is a Bigfoot, and all of the people who are criticizing her are big ol' poopyheads.  Given the choice, I'd rather face a Vampire Beast than a delusional geneticist any day of the week.

Mangy coyotes, mad cows, and mythological creatures

Today at Worldwide Wacko Watch we're keeping a close eye on three developing stories.  At least I am.  My research team, made up of my dogs Grendel and Doolin, are currently asleep, having just completed a critical mission of barking at nothing at 4 AM. 

Of course, maybe there was something there, and I just didn't notice it.  Some people in Cedar Park, Texas, were probably wishing they had dogs as brave as mine to protect them when they saw, skulking in a field near Hill Country Winery, a pack of Chupacabras.  (Source)

"I don't know what it is," said Rick Cumptson, who has also seen the animals in a field outside of his store. "I'd never even heard of Chupacabra until about two weeks ago. I started looking, trying to figure out what the hell these were.  They were just hanging out there in the field.  It looked like maybe they had just had breakfast, and were out there playing around."

Well, already that has to make you wonder.  Chupacabras don't "play around."  They terrorize residents with their horrifying visages, rippling muscles, and glowing red eyes, and look around for goats to disembowel.  Be that as it may, Cumpston and others who have seen the animals are certain that what they're seeing is the renowned blood-sucking cryptid.

Me, I'm not so sure.  Every time someone has seen a Chupacabra, or taken a photograph, or shot one, it's turned out to be a coyote with sarcoptic mange.   Jack Bonner, who works for Williamson County Animal Control, concurs.  "Anybody that calls in a Chupacabra -- it's a coyote with mange," Bonner said, adding that there was a "really, really, really nasty, ugly, mangy coyote that was over in that area" a few months ago.

Cumpston, of course, isn't convinced.  "I don't think it's possible," he told reporters for the Austin Statesman.  "I've seen coyotes and I've seen this -- two of them within 25 feet -- their head is nowhere similar to a coyote at all. Their ears are different, their eyes are different. I just can't believe that."

So, if you visit Texas, watch out for Chupacabras on the rampage.  Or mangy coyotes.  Either one, I would imagine, would be really, really, really nasty to meet.


But not, perhaps, as scary as a bunch of deranged cows, which is what some farmers in Indiana had to contend with after their field got buzzed by a UFO.  (Source)

MUFON (the Mutual UFO Network) posted a story on June 5 that there was a report from an undisclosed location in Indiana, telling about a sighting of a UFO that "streaked across the sky very fast and had a long tail behind it."  This, so far, isn't that unusual -- dozens of such reports come in every day.  But what happened afterwards sets it apart.

Minutes later, the eyewitness said that his cows began "going nuts, making noises and slamming themselves into the gate."  He himself reports feeling "strange and shaky," and says that shortly thereafter, he "heard sirens and saw several emergency response vehicles headed in the direction that the 'UFO' was traveling."

The whole thing puts me in mind of the strangely satisfying CowAbduction, where you see a photograph of a calmly grazing cow, and when you click on it, the cow moos and gets flung upwards into the air, as if with a tractor beam.  No, nothing else happens, but it's still funny enough that just I spent ten minutes messing around with it, probably because I need to have another cup of coffee so that my brain will actually start working.  On the other hand, the tracker on the CowAbduction page says that the website has logged 1,650,553 cow abductions to date, so I guess I'm not the only one who is easily amused.


And even cow abductions aren't as scary as what's going on in Chesterfield, Michigan, where a mythological creature is stalking the woods.  (Source)

A Macomb County police report from June 6 states that a Chesterfield resident had a rock thrown through his window, with a scary note attached.  The note "said a mythological creature was in the woods nearby and that children should be made aware of the danger."

Police scoured the woods nearby and "did not find any suspects, nor any mythological creatures."

Me, if I was trying to warn my neighbors about rampaging mythological creatures, (1) I would find a less antisocial way to warn them than throwing a rock through their window, and (2) I would be a little more specific regarding what I was warning them about.  What kind of mythological creature?  A centaur?  A leprechaun?  A balrog?  You can see that the kinds of responsive measures you might want to take would be different in each of those cases -- respectively (1) hide the women-folk, (2) look for a pot in which to bring home your gold, or (3) piss yourself and scream like a little girl.  So it would have been nice if they could have given the Chesterfield resident a little more information regarding what they were up against.  However, there were no further reports of balrogs in the woods, so it all ended happily enough.


So, anyway, that's our report for the day.  I think that about winds us up here, which is a good thing, because my dogs have woken up and are barking again.  Maybe this time there's actually something out there in the back yard -- possibly a mangy chupacabra, a mad, UFO-crazed cow, or a "mythological creature."  Or maybe they're just barking because they like to bark.  Myself, I suspect it's the latter.

Saturday shorts

Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch we're currently following four stories.  Burning the midnight oil, burning the candle at both ends, and burning rubber in pursuit of truth.

And we are pleased to report that a criminal court in Zimbabwe apparently has the same goal, because they have found three prostitutes innocent of witchcraft.  (Source)  The prostitutes had been accused of "aggravated indecent assault" on the prompting of seventeen men, who claimed that they had been forcibly raped by the women.  This by itself seems pretty implausible, but the implausibility crosses a line into the realm of "just plain crazy" when you hear why the men said they were raped:

To collect their semen in order to perform black magic.

It's scary to think that in this day and age that claim would even make it as far as a criminal trial, but at least the women were found innocent.  After all, in some parts of the world, superstition still rules -- there have been other cases of alleged witchcraft, notably in Sudan and Saudi Arabia, where charges of sorcery have resulted in a death sentence.  But in Zimbabwe, wiser heads have prevailed, and the seventeen accusers have to come up with a different excuse to explain to their wives why they were visiting a prostitute, now that "She made me do it in order to steal my semen!" has been ruled out by a court of law.  Rationality triumphs again.


Which is more than I can say for the people at Nepal Airlines, who have fixed a mechanical problem in a troublesome airplane by sacrificing two goats.  (Source)

Apparently, there was a technical issue with one of the airline's Boeing 757s, and after repeatedly attempting to repair it using conventional techniques, someone came up with the novel solution of sacrificing two goats to the Hindu sky god, Akash Bhairab.   The problem, said Raju K. C., a senior airline official, was solved by this approach.

You have to wonder how this was explained to passengers facing delays because of the mechanical trouble.  "We're sorry, but Flight 1488 from Kathmandu to Hong Kong has been delayed.  Please be assured that your flight will board as soon as the captain and flight crew have finished sacrificing a goat on the runway.  We apologize for the inconvenience." 

I don't know about you, but if I heard something like this, I would elect to get from Kathmandu to Hong Kong by some other method, such as walking the entire way.


Next, we have a report that El Chupacabra might have left his desert home and be vacationing in England.  (Source)

Sue Langham, a mother of two from Hale, England, was up early one day last week to catch a train, and saw sitting on her back doorstep a creature "with the head of a fox and a muscly body that was making a noise that sounded like a strangled wolf."

"I was shocked by what I saw," Langham told reporters.  "We sometimes see foxes in the back garden and this was nothing like that." 

Myself, I think this sounds like a clear report of El Chupacabra.  Okay, I know that most of the sightings of that creepy cryptid are from the American Southwest.  I also know that all the reports of El Chupacabra that have resulted in tangible evidence have turned out to be coyotes, foxes, or dogs with mange, but still.  Why couldn't the mysterious bloodsucking fiend make its way to England?  I know that given the number of people with guns in England as compared to, say, Texas, if I were a Terrifying Carnivorous Beast From Hell, I would prefer to take my chances with the Brits.


And this is doubly so now that a senior official with Texas Parks and Wildlife's Law Enforcement Division has publicly stated that it's legal to kill Bigfoot.  (Source)

John Lloyd Scharf, of Cryptomundo, wrote to Parks and Wildlife to ask the question, given the number of recent Sasquatch sightings in the Lone Star State.  He got the following response from L. David Sinclair, the Law Enforcement Division's Chief of Staff:

Mr. Scharf:

The statute that you cite (Section 61.021) refers only to game birds, game animals, fish, marine animals or other aquatic life. Generally speaking, other nongame wildlife is listed in Chapter 67 (nongame and threatened species) and Chapter 68 (nongame endangered species). “Nongame” means those species of vertebrate and invertebrate wildlife indigenous to Texas that are not classified as game animals, game birds, game fish, fur-bearing animals, endangered species, alligators, marine penaeid shrimp, or oysters. The Parks and Wildlife Commission may adopt regulations to allow a person to take, possess, buy, sell, transport, import, export or propagate nongame wildlife. If the Commission does not specifically list an indigenous, nongame species, then the species is considered non-protected nongame wildlife, e.g., coyote, bobcat, mountain lion, cotton-tailed rabbit, etc. A non-protected nongame animal may be hunted on private property with landowner consent by any means, at any time and there is no bag limit or possession limit.

If you have any questions, please contact Assistant Chief Scott Vaca. I have included his e-mail address. I will be out of the office and in Houston on Friday.

Best,

L. David Sinclair
Chief of Staff – Division Director I
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department
Law Enforcement Division
4200 Smith School Road
Austin, TX 78744

So listen up, Bigfoot: you're on notice.  If you go messin' around with anyone in Texas, you're likely to find yourself in a world o' hurt, and the law ain't gonna protect you.  You might just want to get outta Dodge now.  Try England, I hear it's really nice this time of year.  But I don't recommend trying to get there on Nepal Airlines.

Monster round-up

It's been a busy few days for those of us who like to keep track of the activities of monsters that probably don't exist.

First, we have a report from Auckland, New Zealand, where a swamp monster is threatening a multi-million dollar railway tunnel project.

Apparently, the site of the tunnel was the home of the Horotiu, a dreadful monster that could cause the trains to crash if the tunnel project is completed.  Glenn Wilcox, a member of the Maori Statutory Board, objected to the fact that the siting of the tunnel was done without consideration of the feelings of the Horotiu.  "After all," Wilcox said,  "the Horotiu was here first."

So Wilcox and others have proposed to the City Planning Board that they have ceremonies to placate the Taniwha, which are local deities who (if they are happy) might intercede with the Horotiu and prevent him from wrecking the trains.

So, what we have here is that city administrators are being asked to placate invisible, mythical entities, so that they will intercede for them with another invisible, mythical entity.  I'd go further into this, but I'm sensing some thin ice here, given that my grandmother used to pray all the time to St. Jude, asking him to pass along her messages to Jesus.  So I'll just move along to...

... El Chupacabra taking a vacation in Siberia.

Evidently deciding that the summer heat in Texas and New Mexico was just too much, our friend EC has decided to pack his bags and head to cooler climes.  And true to his name ("Chupacabra" means "goat sucker") he has begun to exsanguinate Siberian goats, which are three words I bet you've never seen used in the same sentence.

The English language version of Moscow News reports that livestock owners near Novosibirsk have found numerous goats dead, and drained of blood through puncture marks in the neck.  No one has seen the wily creature, but of course parallels to alleged attacks in the United States were immediately drawn.

“If this creature is not stopped it could make its way to Novosibirsk! Only our police force are doing jack-diddly about it,” complaining locals told reporters for Komsomolskaya Pravda.  “They say that there is no Chupacabra. Come if you will journalists, have a look at what is happening to us.”

The most remarkable thing about this, in my opinion, is the use of the word "jack-diddly" in a Russian news report.  I wonder what the Russian word for "jack-diddly" is?

The people of the village of Tolmochevskoye, where the attacks took place, decided that an appropriate course of action was to ring all the church bells, and organize night patrols.  So far, the approach seems to have worked, and there have been no more reports of dead goats.  The Moscow News concludes by saying that at least "the beast has turned out to be a boon to troubled parents, presenting a very useful threat for naughty children."

So, there you have it.  New Russian parenting strategy:  "Eat your borscht, or I'll throw you outside and El Chupacabra will get you."

From the chilly tundra of Siberia, we move along to the even chillier oceans surrounding Antarctica, where we have reports of an aquatic humanoid called a "Ningen."  Supposedly, the Ningen is all white, with huge eyes and a torso that ends in a mermaid-like tail.  Below we have what is alleged to be a photograph of a Ningen:

Interestingly, the whole Ningen thing apparently started much the way that Slender Man did, with some posts on an internet forum.  People read them and reposted them and elaborated on them (and did some fancy Photoshop work on their own accord), and now we have Ningen reports coming in from as far away as coastal Namibia.  (These being undoubtedly sightings of the rare African Crested Ningen.)

A YouTube video (here) goes into the photos and video clips that are alleged to be Ningens.  What strikes me as curious is how bored the narrator sounds, which is kind of weird given that he evidently believes they exist.  Myself, if I discovered evidence of scary mermaid-things in the ocean, I'd actually be excited enough to have at least some minor vocal inflections.

In any case, I have to admit, real or not, they're kind of creepy-looking, with the giant eyes, and pasty white skin.  I think they'd make excellent minions for Cthulhu, don't you?

And that's the Monster Round-Up for today: albino mermaids, swamp monsters, and El Chupacabra visits Siberia.  As always, we'll be waiting for hard evidence confirming these reports to turn up.

Unfortunately, thus far there's been "jack-diddly."