[Dec 31, 1995] -- On Thursday, December 21 near Guanica on the southwestern coast, 44-year-old mechanic Osvaldo Claudio Rosado was up at 3 AM washing a car. He walked toward the patio of his home to shut off the water faucet where the hose was connected. Suddenly without warning, he was grabbed from behind. When Rosado tried to fight off the intruder, he was shocked to see a black-haired "gorilla" about five feet tall. The animal ran off and Rosado drove to the Tito Mattei Hospital in Yauco to have doctors examine and treat cuts in his abdomen, possibly torn by fingernails or claws on the animal's hands.
Local media wondered if this was the now-famous Chupacabras "goat sucker" which has been haunting domestic animals all over the island. In the same area two weeks before, police investigated the unusual bloodless deaths of chickens and cows in Ensenada and Barrio Fuig.
The mystery of the Chupacabras "goat sucker" began last March 11, 1995 when eight sheep were found dead on a farm owned by Enrique Barreto Hernandez in Orocovis at the center of the island. The animals had three strange marks or puncture holes in the chest and were described as "completely drained of blood."
Even then, residents speculated that perhaps a large, agile primate was on the loose from some secret El Junque military laboratory. But others who had seen either the creature or moving lights in the sky speculated that the chupacabras might be from outer space. That conclusion was partly provoked by the very large, slanted, glowing red eyes that eyewitnesses have described on the creature. Those red eyes have been sketched on a face that is flat, perhaps simian-like, but on a body some say is covered with spotted skin "like a frog's" or has "spikes on its head and back" with "chicken legs" that have a 3-toed foot about six inches long. Such tracks have been found and photographed in dirt near dead animals. This creature has been seen to hop, or fly, from the ground to a tree or from trees to the ground. But in 1995, no one reported seeing a chupacabras and a UFO together in the same place at the same time.
As 1995 closes, the Chupacabras victims have included hundreds of cows, horses, sheep, goats, chickens, rabbits, cats and dogs, all with odd, bloodless puncture marks in the neck, chest or abdomen found from one end of the island to the other. On December 14th, El Vocero [news] reported that in Naguabo on the east coast, several caged rabbits were "found dead with holes in the neck area, without a drop of blood." Other rabbits had disappeared. Near the rabbit cage was a track with a three-toed claw.
Since last spring, the attacks have spread from the center of Puerto Rico to the northeast where the Canovanas mayor organized an unsuccessful search party for the Chupacabras, then on to Arecibo and the southwestern coast. Attacks have sometimes occurred at both ends of the island within days, such as the Naguabo rabbits and the puzzling "primate" encounter by Osvaldo Rosado near Guanica. It would take three hours by car to drive from Naguabo to Guanica.
Among the numerous unanswered questions are these: How many chupacabras are there? Is it possible that the creatures' disappearances and travels are made easier by underground caverns and passageways long-eroded in the island's limestone? And was Osvaldo Rosado's encounter the first indication that El Chupacabras is beginning to attack humans?
Original file name: .CNI - Goatsucker update
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