JEROME TOWNSHIP (WWJ) - Police is Midland County have determined there is no mythological beast roaming around after a local woman called 911 and reported seeing a Chupacabra in her backyard earlier this week.
Midland County Sheriff Myron Greene told Mlive that deputies responded to an apartment in the 1900 block of West Saginaw Road in Jerome Township after a 40-year-old woman dialed 911 and told a rather strange tale.
Greene said the call came in to Midland County Central Dispatch around 9:45 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 1, and the woman told authorities that a Chupacabra and a capybara were inside and outside of her apartment.
“She’s reporting an animal out back. She believes possibly it could be a Chupacabra,” a dispatcher can be heard informing law enforcement on a recording of the call.
There's some silence before the officer askes, “What’s the animal?”
“A Chupacabra, sir, she described it,” the dispatcher replies.
There's another pause after the officer says he is on the way to check it out before he says "There’s been a high amount of sightings of those in that area lately, by the way."
Greene said deputies arrived to the apartment, checked out the area and spoke with the woman before verifying "there was no evidence of any strange animals."
According to the sheriff, the woman later told deputies she might know why she might have seen a Chupacabra.
“After that, she said she was coming off using some intoxicated substances," Green told Mlive.
Deputies say the woman was not issued a citation over the incident.
“She honestly somehow believed those animals may have been there,” Greene added.
The Chupacabra is a creature of legend and stands among the ranks of other mythological creatures such as Big Foot, Champ, the Jersey Devil and the Mothman.
According to legend, the beast commonly attacks livestock, like goats and cattle, and drinks their blood. Such acts have led the creature to be called a "Chupacabra," which means "goat sucker" in Spanish,
Since its first sighting in Puerto Rico in the mid-1900s, people in Mexico, the U.S. Southwest, and even China have reported seeing it, National Geographic said.
Sightings in the American Southwest describe the creature as being a four-legged canine-type of creature with scraggly fur while reports in Central and South America say the Chupacabra is a short, reptilian creature that stands on two legs.
Scientists have mostly dismissed the Chupacabra as myth and carcasses reported to be the creature haven't shocked the zoological community into belief.
"In almost all these cases, the monsters have turned out to be coyotes suffering from very severe cases of mange, a painful, potentially fatal skin disease that can cause the animals' hair to fall out and skin to shrivel, among other symptoms," the publication stated.
Capybaras, on the other hand, are an actual animal whose relatives live in many American homes. Closely related to the guinea pig, the Capybara is the largest rodent on Earth that makes its home in the forests of northern and central South America, National Geographic writes.
A small, invasive population does exist in Florida.