Nexus - 0404 - New Times Magazine-pages

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The Carolina homicide detective said he watched in disbelief as the strange, glowing animal rose into the air. Some residents are convinced that the chupacabras is linked to the flying discs that are often seen in the skies above Puerto Rico. In June 1995, Mrs Enrique Gonzales and her six-year-old daugh- ter were outside around 11.30 pm on a warm summer evening. Mr Gonzales heard both of them scream and immediately ran over to them, whereupon he saw a huge, round, glowing object. His wife and daughter told him they were watching the object when suddenly a red beam of light came out and touched the little girl on her upper right arm. Mr Gonzales reported that his daughter's skin reddened in a circle and "bubbled up" where she'd been hit with the beam. Photographer Eddie Deese Conde, from E/ Vocero newspaper, eventually heard about the incident and travelled to the Gonzales' home. Conde told me later that by the time he got there the little girl's upper arm had several bumps, but the redness had gone. Two months later in September, Mr Gonzales’ wire chicken coop was violently torn apart and nine of the birds lay dead with bloodless holes in their necks, legs or backs. "It was the chu - pacabras," he said emphatically, "and I think it came from that UFO!" Even though there was no direct or proven connection between the two incidents, the notorious chupacabras was beginning to be blamed for every animal death. Privately, many locals worried that the chupacabras might attack humans. In the town of Canovanas, in the first week of August 1995, Miguel Agosta got up in the early morning to walk across the street from his home to the auto garage where he works as a x + i Drawing of a large, black creature with huge, round, red, reflective eyes, which computer technician Juan Murati saw as it sat in a tree near his home in Canovanas, Puerto Rico, at the end of September 1995. (Drawing by Juan Murati) in disbelief as the strange, glowing animal rose into the air. mechanic. His wife, Madalyne, was home with their children and that day she was helping her mother who lived next door. Miguel's first job was to fix a truck he had left with its hood up the night before. He said that when he got into the driver's seat to start the engine, "There was a terrible noise, a loud thumping, and then I saw a creature land on the ground near me. It was about three to four feet high and it moved in a crawling way. But then it just stood next to the cyclone fence about eight feet away and jumped straight over into the tall grass. A few hours later, my wife and her mother saw the same creature on the sidewalk in front of our house." Madalyne Agosta told me that she was helping her mother clean her house and was washing the front window when she saw two people walking backwards on the sidewalk, not more than five feet away, with their eyes wide open as if scared. Puzzled, she continued to watch and was shocked when a "creature I had never seen before" came walking slowly in front of her on the other side of the window. "This creature was standing in front of me for at least a minute," Madalyne said. "And the thing that really impressed me were the eyes. I get scared every time I have to talk about this ecause it seems to me it looked like one of those extraterrestrials that you see in movies: long, slanted eyes that were dark grey. The whole eyes were like wet Jello. It was holding two hands up ind of limply and I could see three fingers that looked human except there were nails about two inches long. The feet looked uman, too, but they had only three toes separated by big spaces in between. There was a lot of mud on the feet. Going down the ack were red feathers or something about four inches long. When I started screaming, that's when my mother came." Madalyne's mother told me, "At the beginning I thought it was a kangaroo because the nose and face was kind of long and point- ed out a little. But when I saw the back, I could see some red feathers that were laid down. And I looked to see if it had a tail, ut it had no tail. Then I thought it was not a kangaroo. Then it just started running across the street and hid itself in the gra: The mud and water smell suggests that the creature hides out in sewer ducts, underground caverns and springs or somewhere that is wet. The situation is even more confusing when scattered reports that the chupacabras can fly are taken into consideration. The Carolina homicide detective said he watched in disbelief as the strange, glowing animal rose into the air. This high strange- ness in the chupacabras reports has provoked some investigators to speculate that the creature might even be a new biological android created by whatever pilots the discs. More terrestrial explanations have been fruit bats or flying foxes which have big wing spans—but their bodies aren't four to five feet long. 66 = NEXUS JUNE - JULY 1997 The Carolina homicide detective said he watched