PSoTD

The 2007 Great Insect Fair is tomorrow at Penn State's Snider Ag Arena.

I'm surprised we don't see more of this kind of story in the states. Americans' taste for natural and native plant landscaping seems pretty low.

Now, let me ask you this - is this really any better looking than the body parts we're required to cover?

Hide the chickens! They're coming ...

"It is one ugly creature," Canion said, holding the head of the mammal, which has big ears, large fanged teeth and grayish-blue, mostly hairless skin.

Canion and some of her neighbors discovered the 40-pound bodies of three of the animals over four days in July outside her ranch in Cuero, 80 miles southeast of San Antonio. Canion said she saved the head of the one she found so she can get to get to the bottom of its ancestry through DNA testing and then mount it for posterity.

She suspects, as have many rural denizens over the years, that a chupacabra may have killed as many as 26 of her chickens in the past couple of years.

"I've seen a lot of nasty stuff. I've never seen anything like this," she said.

What tipped Canion to the possibility that this was no ugly coyote, but perhaps the vampire-like beast, is that the chickens weren't eaten or carried off , all the blood was drained from them, she said.