El Chupacabra

The “goat-sucker” is one of the youngest legends here, born in the mid-1990s when livestock across Mexico and Puerto Rico turned up dead and drained of blood, and rumor built a creature to blame: a spined, red-eyed, dog-like thing that stalks the ranch country by night. Biologists point to mangy coyotes and ordinary predators, and no evidence has ever supported a monster. But the panic was real and the Chupacabra galloped across the whole hemisphere in a decade, a rare chance to watch a folk legend being born in modern times.