The Chupacabra: The Goat-Sucker of the Americas
Most of the beings in this chronicle are old. They come to us worn smooth by centuries of telling, their origins lost in forests that were cut down long ago. The chupacabra is different, and that is precisely its fascination: it is a monster whose birth certificate we practically possess. We know the island where it first drew blood, the year — 1995 — the town, the name of the woman who described it, and even the joke that named it. It is the youngest great monster in the world, folklore caught in the very act of being born — and for that reason it may teach us more about where the Wild Hunt and the werewolf came from than any creature in the old bestiaries. If you want to know how legends began in the darkness of the tenth century, watch closely how one began in the electric light of the twentieth. Eight Goats in Canóvanas It started with dead animals. In the spring and summer of 1995, in the hill towns of eastern Puerto Rico, farmers began finding their livestock dead in the morni...