CHUPACABRA???

It is my pleasure to offer up another article from sorry excuse of a newspaper, Hallstown Gazette – formerly known as the Northeast Texas Gazette (name changed after a petition was signed by 10,058 people who were ashamed to have such a lousy paper use the name of their corner of the great state of Texas!). You can be certain that the accounts in the article are greatly exaggerated and that any facts given are questionable.  It is, nonetheless, one of the most entertaining pieces their unimaginative head reporter has produced since February 2010. Without further ado…

DEPUTY ATTACKED BY CHUPACABRA

By Notta Rider / Hallstown Gazette

05/30/2012

Shortly after midnight on Tuesday morning deputies responded to multiple reports of strange cries being heard in a neighborhood on the south side of Apache Lake. One resident claimed that she was awoken by the cry and was then nearly crushed as her rottweiler, Tiny, jumped into her bed and hid under the covers. Deputies were dispatched to check the area.

Deputy Samuel (Samwise) Brown was first to arrive in the area and confirmed that he was hearing a cry like he had never heard before. “Think of what ya'd hear if ya crossed a coyote, a lynx, and one of them hyenas,” he said in his report. “It wasn’t like that but was just as weird.”

Two other deputies, Merrill McKelvy and Ryan Ardmore, arrived to “assist” Brown in the hunt for the “whatever it is.” McKelvy confided later that she thought the call was “a bunch of malarkey” but also thought it would be fun and planned to get a video of the expected “foolishness” that was “inevitable” from her male counterparts. Ardmore said he went because he had to (finding “Bigfoot” wouldn’t add a cent to his paycheck).

Twenty minutes after the three radioed that they would be on foot near the caller’s house there was a ten second burst on the radio in which what sounded to be a beast was roaring and a man screaming “MOMMY!” could be heard. Silence followed and calls to check the welfare of the deputies went unanswered.

As the sheriff was being informed there was a problem Ardmore called dispatch on the secondary radio frequency. “County, You can mark the log as “Chupacabra 1 and Samwise 0.”

Lieutenant Daniels, the shift supervisor, was next up on the radio. “Are y’all okay up there? Does Samwise need a medic?”

“We are 10-4 and negative on the medic Eltee,” McKelvy replied in a voice that was a bit higher than normal. “He needs a clean pair of pants though.”

“McKelvy, call my cell.”

“Negative. I can’t. It’s not working right now.”

“She cain’t because the blasted ‘thing’ ate it!” Samwise added.

A minute of silence was followed by the deep commanding voice of Boss, the Harrelson County sheriff, on the radio. “I want the three of you in my office in ten minutes.”

“But Boss, we’re twenty miles out.”

“You have lights and sirens on your cars don’t you?”

Details of the meeting which took place eight minutes later are not available. I have, however, been able to learn that two pairs of uniform pants were requisitioned from department storage.

Brown admitted that he needed clean pants because he tripped over McKelvy while she was filming the “chupacabra” snapping it’s “long and sharp” teeth at him.  He says he fell into a muddy ditch.  “I wont say what happened to McKelvy’s pants,” he laughed “but I will say that MY pants got soiled from the outside.”

This reporter managed to corner Sheriff Boss at the elections office later in the morning. He didn’t have time to discuss the incident but did at least give me a statement. “I am embarrassed by the unprofessional conduct of my deputies and will be disciplining them. If they are going to pull something like this on election day they should have at least bagged the thing so we could mount it in the office.” He also expressed his relief that this story wouldn’t hit the paper until after the polls closed and that voters would have four years to forget about the incident before the next election. 

BLOGGER'S NOTE: 
I don't know any of the deputies involved personally but I was able to track down Brown's wife (she and I used to work together). She says that Samwise insists that the “thing” weighed at least 80 pounds and looked like a giant hamster. He also told her that it only came at him after he poked it in the rear with his flashlight.

I drove to Apache Lake to see if I could find a trace of the “chupacabra” and believe that I was successful. There is a wildlife preserve near the south shore and I went to the main gate to see if I could find the caretaker but it turned out that I didn't need any assistance. Several giant hamsters, correctly known as capybaras, could be seen frolicking in and around a pond that was just inside the fence. Further evidence was obtained when I found an abandoned iPhone near a drainage pipe near the pond’s dam.

It is not my place to suggest that the deputies overreacted to a non-violent, fun loving herbivore. I am, however, taking bids for the rights to the video I downloaded from the phone before turning it over to Sheriff Boss.

 

07/30/2020

I originally had a cute picture of a capybara with a rabbit ears headpiece on and had permission at the time to use it.  I have to assume the owner changed her mind and had Blogger remove it.  I was not notified nor was I asked to take it down. It was not linked to the site that it came from but I did have a separate link posted.  The site is gone now.    Mike.

DISCLAIMER:   As my profile says my my primary job is that of a dispatcher/911 operator so I need to make it clear that the persons in this story are fictional.  This story is fiction.  Yes, there was an incident with a capybara and some deputies but their involvement was to get it away from a road so it wouldn't get hit by a car.  The events told here are pure fiction.  The county, town, lake, newspaper, and persons involved in this story DO NOT exist.