Argentina: Cattleman Blames Herd Death on Chupacabras

Source: Informate Salta
Date: 06.30.2015

Argentina: Cattleman Blames Herd Death on Chupacabras

The cattleman, over the course of the weekend, visited his property located in the Cuña Muerta wilderness of Tartagal, discovering that two cows and two goats had been mysteriously slain.

The four animals were missing their tongues and entrails, with no visible traces of blood. In his complaint to the police, the cattleman stated that the notorious character known as the Chupacabras could be to blame.

[The same news source reported another case last year, which appears below -- SC]

Source: Diario El Tribuno and Informate Salta
Date: November 24, 2014

40 Goats Killed in Coronel Cornejo, But No One Knows Who or What's to Blame

In a single night the predator eliminated sixteen goats from the caretaker's surroundings, despite the presence of six dogs. During its second attack, it killed twenty-four, "toying with them and making numbers [sic]."

The caretakers ascertained that in all of their years, they had never suffered a similar attack by creatures who left no traces. In barely two nights, a family of goat livestock suffered the rage of a strange being that ended the lives of forty goats by slitting their throats.

The mysterious case kept livestock ranchers from the locality of Coronel Cornejo on alert. This community is less than 20 kilometers distant from the city of Tartagal, and the attacks occurred on Saturday and Sunday evening.

The family of Jaime Villalba is still astonished by what what happened only meters from where the caretaker and his family were sleeping. Forty large goats were slain with identical injuries to the throat.

The Villalba's smallhold is located some 2 kilometers north of Coronel Cornejo and its owner had though to sell the young goats for the new years' festivities. "We do not know happened, but on Saturday, when the caretaker awoke, we found sixteen dead animals scattered throughout the yard, all of them with the same injuries to the throat," she said, adding: "During the evening of the first storm on Friday, I heard Caschi [one of the dogs] crying and pawing the door to be let in. It was already dark and I opened to let him in. That's when I saw something or someone jumping the fence, as if running off into the wilderness. It was huge and very agile, perhaps a jaguar. Had it been a hungry puma, it would have also eaten them. Besies, the dogs would have attacked it."

"What's odd is that [the goats] made no noise when they were in danger. We had nearly 200 animals," the caretakers told El Tribuno. "We don't mean to alarm anyone, but to kill 40 large goats - since they didn't attack the kids or the newborns - it must be a very powerful animal or creature, able to catch and kill animals in a confined space without them scattering and voicing their terror," they said, still overwhelmed by the death toll.

The mystery came in two separate episodes for the Villalbas: on Saturday morning they incinerated the first 16 dead goats, without thinking that 24 more animals would appear lifeless in their yard, with strange tooth marks in their throats, but without these injuries producing a loss of blood, another detail that did not go unnoticed. "Only a savage bite could have done that."

No one can imagine what could have happened to it. "We have several animals left, so we will stand guard all night to see what attacked them so stealthily. If it's an animal, we'll feed it lead," said one of the caretakers.

"We reject the possibility that it could have been dogs or wild animals. Maybe it's a person who doesn't like us, or some wandering spirit, or else it's a predator. This is the first time something so terrifying has befallen us," said the owner of the decimated herd yesterday.

The story of the family harmed by the predator attack leads us to the possibility of cryptids, that is to say, creatures existing in the popular culture but whose actual existence is not proven. Among them we can find the Ucumar and the Chupacabras.

[Translation (c) 2015 S. Corrales, IHU with thanks to Guillermo Giménez, Planeta UFO]