And just like those hazy photos of sasquatches, ghosts, and unidentified flying objects, I just barely got this:
I'm not a photographer, I'm a writer. You can definitely tell from this and from most of the other self-provided photos I've posted. So here's the writing to back this up:
On Sunday, March 19th, 2017 at 2:24p, my mother-in-law Joyce and my wife Michelle, beckon me over to the kitchen window at my parents' house. Outside my mother has a rock island xeriscaped garden which includes a very small fountain and pool that the local wildlife comes to nibble and drink at. The house is located on the slope of Tucson's local landmark, "A" Mountain, which puts it near a large area of desert park, so animals wandering through are common enough.
This was not a normal animal.
When I got to the window, a medium-sized hairless quadruped with blue skin, maybe a few shades darker than a painted Hindu god, was lapping up water from the pool. It had a uniform blue skin colour, no birthmark blotches like on most hairless dogs, or random remaining tufts of hair like on dogs with mange.
The other most likely suspect in Tucson would be a coyote, whom often scavenge edibles from suburban trashbins and random litter. I grew up in the northwestern outskirts of Tucson in the 1970s on a 3-acre desert lot, where I saw hundreds of coyotes, and it was many a night their yipping choruses and howls woke a young boy up, so I know a coyote when I spot one. This was not a coyote.
Unlike the photo, my first glimpse was plain as day, through a clear glass window, a mere 35 feet away. Neither Michelle or Joyce had a cameraphone on them, so I turned and went to the other side of the kitchen to get mine. In the short time that took, the chupacabra began to walk away north, our line of sight passing to the screened part of the window, which is the moire/grainy texture you're seeing in the image above. I tried moving to another window to get another shot, but I barely saw it leaving the driveway, so that's the only picture.
The above is fact. What follows from here forward are my thoughts, cryptid comparisons, and my associative speculations.
You may ask if it was a goatsucker, why wasn't it instead busy drinking blood? While my parents might live near a big swatch of desert, they're still in the city not so far from downtown, and rural farm animals aren't common in their neighborhood. Also, it was a rather warm day, and the chupacabra was probably very thirsty from all the sun. They're not undead, despite the hemophagic similarities, so like any living thing, it needs water to live. Other animals do come there to drink, so it may have been stalking before deciding to go for the water.
My sighting & photo capture matches the ones seen by Dr. Phylis Canion, a rancher in Cuero, TX, who had the xenomorphic body in her freezer, and after some inexact DNA testing (semi-concluded as a wolf-coyote hybrid), had the remains taxidermied, which exhibits some distinct anatomical variants upon closer examination.
A long time ago, my sixth-grade teacher, Mr Ramon Martinez, a very wise man, took a moment in class to bring up the 1972 B-film "Gargoyles". The premise included the idea that a winged humanoid species underwent a long-term hibernation under a mountain, emerging long after the accounts of their appearances had been dismissed (which is probably where the "Jeepers Creepers" films got their premise, and possibly inspired "The Descent" films partly as well). Then Ramon said that his mother once witnessed a group of winged humanoids launch themselves from "A" Mountain.
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| [Sentinel Peak, more commonly known as "A" Mountain.] |
This account begs the questions: Why did the University of Arizona stop quarrying rock on conveniently located "A" Mountain? And aren't there tunnels going from the U of A, to Tucson High, to Roskruge Bilingual School, to possibly elsewhere? My wife once went through a tunnel system extending from behind Park Place to the McDonald's east of the mall and across the street, which has many, many branches leading to gods know where.
If there's a little-known subterranean network under the Tucson valley, why couldn't there be a population of chupacabras somewhere under the mountains concealed in a vaulted den? And if what's called the "Texas Blue Dog" variety of chupacabra could live there, why couldn't the related Puerto Riqueno & South American humanoid chupacabra spotted by my teacher's mother in the 1960s share the same Svartalfheimian space?
People have carved out shrines on the hard to reach upper southern face of "A" Mountain, risking life & limb to make small alcoves with statues of the Virgen de Guadalupe. It seems more than a little trouble to show religious dedication on a steep mountainside as opposed to a more easily constructed yard/bathtub shrine, unless there are perhaps other protective/warding reasons to pick this particular mountain.
In 2014, this oddity was captured in Texas. While it doesn't match dimensions or posture of the creature I saw, this curious variation only expands the types of chupacabra.
Many are the accounts of Huldrefolk, the hidden people, living within the hollow hills. Trolls, kobolds, alfar, dwarves, landvættir. There's a persistence to the idea.
If you allow the possibility of species of things yet to be discovered in the rainforest canopies, or in a darker corner of the Mariana Trench, or surviving from prehistoric times on a South American tepui, then anything could be down there underground. Anything. Realize that our credulous perception of the world is a fragile thing, mutable, and subject to change & expansion.
There's room enough in the world for some, or even many, monsters. You don't have to believe my very real picture. It's grainy, far from definitive, only backed up by three witnesses, but I offer its evident truth to you with these words.
I know what I saw.
# # #
While
a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo
Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals
for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan,
airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a
craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally
interesting endeavours, do contact him.
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