Tig's Adventures: El Chupacabra.

The pungent stench of goat was heavy in the air, and the blood covered Chupacabra standing over Tig didn’t help the aroma. It snarled, tail whipping through the air – deciding whether to eat him…to drain his blood…to harness his organs…Tig couldn’t remember which one Boyrahn had told him was most likely. Right now, it didn’t seem to matter – he was going to die either way. The Chupacabra raised his scaled hand, eyes glowing red, ready to tear him apart.

The crowd cheered. King Joolloot egged the monster on. Tig rolled to the side in a whirl of dust from the arena and crawled desperately towards the weapons table. The Chupacabra snapped his tail through the air once more and the whipping sound urged Tig on like a jockey’s horse. Hysterically crying, Tig couldn’t see much of the weapons table, but he could only hope he was crawling in the right direction.

Three sharp points ripped through his shirt and the heat of blood mingled with the sweat on his back. Agony blazed through his bones - the adrenaline only made Tig more terrified, but before the Chupacabra could stab his claws through him one final time and drain him of all his blood – Tig rolled around, screaming and kicking wildly in a hopeless attempt to keep the monster from drinking him dry. A foot hit the Chupacabra through the jaw, and it staggered back long enough for Tig to scramble closer to the weapons table. His heart wasn’t in it. He was dead. DEAD! No number of muskets or throwing knives or broadswords would save him. He was a farm boy. Not a soldier. Certainly not a Monster Librarian. He couldn’t even write!

The Chupacabra whipped him with his tail with such razor-sharp force Tig’s cheek bled. He knocked over the weapons table with one final cry and a crash of weapons hitting the arena floor – but it was too late. It was hopeless. The Chupacabra was before him once more. Fangs dripping with blood and salivated with hunger. Eyes glowing. Sweat brought a gleam to his patches of scales and a matted damp to his long thick hair.

“Eat him! Eat him! Eat him!”

The hungry growl of the monster rumbled over the chanting of the crowd, Tig’s only hope was to drown the sound out with his tears and cries of agony.

The Chupacabra scratched him again and Tig began aimlessly picking up the weapons that had fallen next to him - throwing them at the monster. The Chupacabra tail wrapped around his neck. Tig threw a roll of rope and missed completely.

“Eat him! Eat him! Eat him!”

The Chupacabra punctured his skin, three claws on one side of his chest, three claws on the other. Tig threw a mace at the monster, it hit his shoulder and broke the grip of one of his hands – but it didn’t last long. Both sets of claws were soon upon him again.

“Eat him! Eat him! Eat him!”

Tig bled.

“Eat him! Eat him! Eat him!”

And Tig bled.

“Eat him! Eat him! Eat him!”

And he bled.

He threw a throwing knife that scratched the monster’s shoulder, but nothing changed. Tig just felt more light-headed. He whacked him with a staff, and the grip of the tail left his neck, but the three-pointed grip draining him didn’t flinch for a second.

“Eat him! Eat him! Eat him!”

The crowd was going wild as Tig was devoured before them, the Chupacabra looked down at him, the hunger in his eyes being sated by the second. Tig threw more weapons at him, finally landing on a musket that he whacked him with repeatedly - with all of the little strength he had left. It did nothing but annoy the monster, occasionally making him lose grip, but when Tig’s finger found the trigger – the world was split with a shattering bang.

The audience went quiet. The Chupacabra let go – red glow fading from his eyes and regressing to a hazel that was hauntingly human. Tig stared up at the bullet hole going through the monster’s neck in disbelief – the Chupacabra seemed just as shocked, stumbling where he stood for a moment or two before collapsing to the ground. Tig suddenly realised he could stand, the monster was off him, and he scrambled to his feet without much thought. Sniffing through his tears, he raised the musket again. Screaming like a madman, he swung it over and over again into the still body of the Chupacabra, far too shaken to ever believe that it would really be dead.

The crowd got passed their stunned silence and followed King Joolloot as he erupted into applause, even if there didn’t seem to be a lot of heart in it. As if they were disappointed they hadn’t seemed the monster eat the farm boy. Tig carried on screaming and bashing the Chupacabra with the end of his musket without paying much attention. 

El Chupacabras

The legend of the El Chupacabra is relatively recent, but has grown in popularity quickly, described by North Americans as ‘Southern equivalent of the Sasquatch’. Descriptions of the cryptid vary between the alien and the canine, they can be earless, or have pointed ears, be tailless or having abnormally long tails. General consensus presents something with large bulging eyes, glowing red with hunger, sunk deep in the face; they have long, bony legs and reach up to five foot – but can jump to twenty-three; they walk on four legs or upright and have large thin spikes running down their backs that are said to double as wings. Their grey-blue skin can be slimy, scaled, infested with warts or dotted with hair, their long-forked tongue slithers and hisses between their mighty protruding fangs that match their lengthy claws. Eye-witness accounts have dubbed them ‘a winged kangaroo’ or ‘goblin’, a ‘half-wolf, half-crocodile like creature’ with three toes, leaving a stink of sulphur behind them, and making a horrid hiss and screeching noise as it feeds.

The first sighting comes from Madelyn Tolentino from Canovanas, a village in Puerto Rico, in 1995. A great number of sheep and other livestock had been increasingly found with a bite in the neck, seemingly drained of blood, at the beginning of the decade but eventually, Tolentino saw the beast they considered responsible and it was quickly blamed for over 1000 killings across the country. A year after, it was seen in the US for the first time in Miami, which gives the general idea of how quickly the phenomenon of Chupacabra spread - the list of countries El Chupacabra have been said to roam now include Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Spain, Portugal, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Bolivia, Columbia, Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, El Salvador and Peru. Most recent sightings even go as far as Russia and the Philippines. Despite the earliest official sighting coming as recently as the 90’s, others have compared it to other accounts of monsters from ‘The Vampire of Moca’ in 1975, and potentially earlier. Its existence has also been subject to two separate FBI investigations.

Tolentino’s account, however, has been put down to the Sci-Fi thriller ‘Species’ that had been released in Puerto Rico that year, and that she herself has described as the monster of the movie having an uncanny likeness to the Chupacabra. However, Tolentino’s ex-husband, his co-worker and her mother all claim to have seen the beast with her – and there are over 30 sightings of Chupacabra in Canovanas at that time, saying it would swoop from the sky to take its prey and leap from tree to tree. Although the name comes from the Spanish ‘goat-sucker’ they will eat beloved pets and other livestock as big as cows and horses. One eye-witness account comes from a mother who saw the beast jump through the window of her house and rip open a teddy bear. Because…delicious? As well as draining blood, it is also said that Chupacabra will consume the ears, eyeballs, tongues and other organs of its prey. In these circumstances, they seem to be removed with an almost surgical precision, whereas the blood is drained from three puncture marks at the neck in the shape of an upside-down triangle.

(Monster from the film 'Species', 1995, said to have a striking resemblance to El Chupacabra)

Other accounts of the cryptid describe its red-eyed gaze being able to petrify or paralyse its prey so it can feed off them at its leisure. Chupacabra have been compared to the ‘Mosquito Man’ by tribes in the South American rainforest and by some are considered to be one and the same. It has also been compared to the Peuchen from Chile, a vampiric flying snake, which may explain how El Chupacabra apparently swooped down from the sky to attack its prey in so many sightings, and although ‘flying snake’ might not fit the image of a conventional descriptions of Chupacabra, The Peuchen has been said to shapeshift into an ‘animal form’ that is more fitting.

Unique to the myth of the Chupacabra is that the most common support for its existence comes from dead bodies locals have either found or shot themselves, the first corpse of a Chupacabra was supposedly being found in 2000. Extensive DNA testing, however, has named these as Coyotes, Dogs and Racoons, usually, with Mange, one alleged Chupacabra even turned out to be a fish. Phyllis Canion is one of the people claiming to have killed a Chupacabra. After failing to catch it on camera, she caught a dead Chupacabra that had been eating her chickens in 2007, and has since had her catch stuffed. She explains the contradictory DNA evidence by suggesting Chupacabra are a rare species of Coyote that live underground. Benjamin Redford describes Texas as a “Chupacabra Factory” and is another active researcher in the legend of El Chupacabra, but with a much less bias view, he spent five years investigating the beast and found simple explanations the most plausible, that the dead livestock can be held accountable to any given wild dog who doesn’t know how to hunt properly.

(Phyllis Canion's stuffed 'Chupacabra')

 Some of the most famous pictures used as evidence, specifically the ‘Chupacabra head on a fence’ (seen below) are easily explained, in 2003 Charlie White took a series of photographs of ‘accidental encounters’ with monsters in urban settings to comment on the torment of society. Many of the mutilated livestock has also been put down to the work of satanic cults, given the surgical precision of the removed organs, eyeballs and tongues – it seems unlikely to be the work of animals. But c’mon, where’s the fun in plausible. Alternative explanations for El Chupacabra has suggested they are a result of secret US government genetic testing, or are extra-terrestrial, considering alien sightings are among the highest in Puerto Rico. 

(Chupacabra head on a fence: Charlie White: 2003)

How do you kill it? Well, clearly there are plenty of Texans who think you can shoot it down like any other animal, but the Chupacabra has also fought Jackie Chan in the ‘Adventures of Jackie Chan’ where it is presented as a werewolf-like curse, with Chan’s friend turning into a Chupacabra on the night of the full moon. Admittedly, this might not be a complete oversimplification of the myth, as they do share some similarities. Werewolves have also been blamed for the death of livestock, drained blood and missing organs over the centuries, however, this applies to most mythical creatures. Other than the additional theory that Chupacabra can shapeshift, there is little other evidence that they could be sitting next to us on the bus. 

 Jackie Chan

Ketch

Tig's Adventures: Origin.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a far-off land when wishing still helped one - there lived three sisters who married three men and had twelve children each, nine of whom married and had seven children themselves. The youngest of this particular families seven children was the most beautiful, wise, kind and dull character you can imagine. She went on to get kidnapped by a witch and sold off to some distant king’s shape-shifting son in return for a golden teapot or something. Anyway, they lived next door to Tig and his mother, who was a widow, and they were poor and unhealthy for they struggled to run their farm with only two sets of hands – and the economy was bad and society didn’t run in their favour.

Tig was skin and bones, but struggled through as much of the farm labour as he could, for his mother was overweight and had arthritis in her feet and a bad back. He fed the chickens, cleaned out the stables, milked the cow, tended the crops, and generally tried to stop the farm from growing into the one-room cottage they called their home. One day, Tig had finished feeding the chickens and clearing out the stables and was on his way to milk the cow, when he found that he was no longer able to milk the cow. Largely due to the fact that the cow was missing, and the fence was broken open.

“You useless waste of space!” Cried his mother when Tig told her the news. “What’s the point of feeding you if you can’t even keep the cows inside! Go out and find him! And if you fail I never want to see you again! And you should drown yourself in the marshes in shame.”

So Tig went forth to find his cow. Who was called Bert, but his mother had never bothered to learn his name. He travelled into the village and asked everyone at the market stalls. To them, one cow looked very much like the other and couldn’t point him in the direction of Bert. A few of them did try and sell Tig different cows, one of which was just a barrel covered in a rug with a smiley face painted onto the side. Tig couldn’t afford a new cow, and now Bert was missing he was beginning to realise how much more of a pet and friend he had been to him rather than mere livestock.

Unsuccessful in the town, Tig had no other choice but to search in the other direction – deep into the vast and unforgiving wilderness of the forest. The trees towered above him, the bark dark, the shadow of the leaves full, it didn’t take long for the day to feel like night as Tig crept along the path. He jumped at every snap, every rustle and bustle, every snicker-snack, each leaf that fell and bird that sang, he almost had a heart attack when a deer went galumphing past. Bert the cow was seeming less and less worth the journey with every cuckoo and swish-sway. But on he went, along the lane that was no place for a farm boy.

Just when a bird took off too suddenly from a nearby tree and Tig was ready to soil his pants and run back home, he heard voices up ahead. He was frozen where he stood, silently praying that he wasn’t about to be mauled to death by a group of bandits. What he heard was a conversation that was probably as far away from something bandits would discuss as possible.

“Erm…your majesty…we really should be going…”

“Nonsense!” Boomed someone who seemed completely ignorant to the fact that they were in a dangerous forest. “Why we must send for a second carriage to cart this fine specimen back to the castle!”

“Sir…” The second, shakier voice replied. “It’s a cow.”

There was a roaring chuckle that rolled from a large belly.

“Oh, you ignorant servant folk do make me laugh. This is no ordinary cow. It is the Almighty Gold-Shitting Cow of Wonder! I’ve heard tales of it since I was a boy! I must have it! It expels gold, Billie, Gold.”

“It’s Boyrahn, sir.” The quieter of the two said, sounding very much like he wanted to ask how he could possibly know that the cow made gold.

Meanwhile, Tig had a frog in his throat. The only reason a cow would be in this forest was because Bert had escaped, and Tig knew for certain that Bert did not, in fact, shit gold. It was also fairly obvious that it was the King who had taken a sudden liking to the cow. Tig swallowed every instinct telling him not too, and turned the corner - shaking more than the leaves in the wind.

“Your majesty…if I may…” Tig squeaked. It was so high pitched and quiet it was a wonder the two men outside their carriage heard him. The carriage was large and bejewelled, it looked like solid gold already, so there was no reason for King Joolloot to want a cow that crapped out anymore. Especially considering that his belt and rings and crown were equally as encrusted with the stuff. Tig had never seen the king before, but his reputation proceeded him. He was a large man, almost as large as the carriage itself, with a big auburn beard and hair that had more gold woven into it. His robes were rich and colourful. His thick eyebrows fell harsh over eyes that twinkled, an odd mix of intimidating and trustworthy that generally led to him performing well in his leadership polls.

“Who’s this lad, then?” The King bellowed. Animals fled from the trees, Boyrahn flinched. Tig glanced between King Joolloot and Bert the cow.

“Forgive me, your majesty,” Tig said in the same high and terrified voice as before. “But I do believe that’s my cow, Bert.”

King Joolloot glanced between Tig and the Cow.

“Well congratulations, lad! You have the honour of giving me your cow. For it is the Almighty Gold-Shitting Cow of Wonder!”

“But…” Tig glanced at Boyrahn who looked back at him with a consoling look that said he had to put up with this all the time. Tig continued. “I know this cow, sir, and I know for certain he does not shit gold.”

“Nonsense!” The king dismissed. “I would know The Almighty Gold-Shitting Cow of Wonder anywhere!”

“If I may sire,” Boyrahn offered. “What does the… Almighty Gold-Shitting Cow of Wonder look like? How can you be sure?”

King Joolloot looked like he’d been in the company of idiot peasants for too long.

“The Almighty Gold-Shitting Cow of Wonder looks exactly like this! White with black spots. Beady little eyes and floppy ears.”

“But that is most cows sire.” Tig said.

“Nonsense!” The Kind boomed.

Thankfully, that was the moment Bert decided to relieve himself.

“Look! Look! He doesn’t shit gold at all, sire. Bert is but a regular cow, and if I don’t take him home my mother will have me drowned.”

“Nonse-” The King started, but then caught sight and whiff of the cows distinctly non-golden turds and his face fell. “What betrayal! The Almighty Gold-Shitting Cow of Wonder is a lie! This is false advertising!”

The Kings annoyance was clear, Tig suddenly felt a lot smaller. He shrunk another few inches when Joolloot’s attention went to him now his prize was lost.

“You saved me from a scam, young peasant lad! As a sign of my gratitude, I will not slaughter the beast and your family may keep the cow!”

“Thank you, si-” Tig started, a flood of relief rolling through his body. But the King wasn’t done, and his peace was interrupted and destroyed.

“And you will have the honour of being enrolled in my service! We need a new Monster-Librarian! The Last one was blown to smithereens.”

King Joolloot sounded ecstatic about the circumstances and climbed back into his carriage without further ado. Clearly, he’d gotten over the loss of the Almighty Gold-Shitting Cow of Wonder.

“…Monster-Librarian?” Tig asked. Boyrahn looked like he was already dead.

“You just have to fight the creatures the knight's catch and record their behaviour.” He looked back at the carriage and hurried over to him, pulling a book from his satchel. It was brown and beaten and had an alarming amount of burnt patches. The charred title read Monster 101. “I just buried Florin while the King was feeding the Ducks. If you can’t write, I’ll scribe for you, but we must take your cow home and bring you to the castle.”

To say Tig was terrified of a new position that would likely kill him in the first week was an understatement. But there was no denying the King his orders. Especially when he was acting as if Tig should be grateful. Then again…he’d be living in a palace, where there was food and warm fires. In this world, this was the best fate a peasant could ask for. Tig beamed and climbed on the carriage with Boyrahn.

Tig’s mother slaughtered Bert the cow after three days and sold whatever meat she didn’t eat for profit. The King quickly forgot about Bert the Cow and found a Goose that he kept in the courts, eagerly awaiting the first golden egg it would lay. Boyrahn promptly hid the regular eggs it laid to keep the king distracted. Tig was given a rock-hard bed, but it was the first bed he’d ever had so he was delighted. The bed was in a damp and dark room, but it was warmer than home and the first time he’d ever had a room to himself. Not to mention three whole meals a day. This arrangement truly was a blessing. He was so grateful he could almost ignore the roars and screeches from the Monster stables on the other side of the castle’s walls. 

TO BE CONTINUED.