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While not acutally a chupacabra,
the chihuahua is the closest known relative |
chu·pa·ca·bra
CHo͞opəˈkäbrə/
Noun1.
an animal said to exist in parts of Latin America, where it supposedly attacks animals, esp. goats.
The following story is so fresh that I can hardly speak of
it without my hear beginning to pound. It was a dark and stormy night(It was a
clear night with no wind.), lightning crashed and thunder boomed (it didn't.) Everyone in the apartment had gone to bed, and
there was nothing to keep me company but the occasional creak of the aging
floorboards.
Rather than exercising common sense I was staying up late
and reading the walking dead by flashlight. Inevitably this led to several
instances where I would jump out of my skin at a passing car, or a creaking
board, thinking that the zombie apocalypse had begun. While this may seem
uncommon, I can assure you it is a regular occurrence for me, and it has done
nothing to stop me from late night reading…
Everything was fairly calm, until the unthinkable happened.
The cone of silence enveloping the apartment shattered; there came a growl from
the hallway. For once, this is all true. From somewhere inside the apartment I
heard a fairly large growl that sounded as if it had come from a small to
mid-sized animal. In the past I had never been one to fear the chupacapra, but
at that moment I found myself wishing I had a goat to sacrifice to the hallway
monster.
I froze in bed, trying not to make a sound, lest the beast
hear me and come searching. Trying to be as quietly as possible I pulled my
phone out of my dresser and sent out a quick text. It read: “ARE YOU GUYS
MAKING F*&^ing GROWLING NOISES?!” It
may seem strange, but this happened before, and would not have been all that
out of character.
As I waited for a return to my message, I spent the minutes
convincing myself that I hadn’t heard anything and that I was only being crazy.
You can’t possibly have heard growling…
What kind of animal would come into the apartment and then growl angrily?! Does
that even make any sense?! The answer to all of these was of course, no, it
did not make sense, and the entire idea was illogical. Slowly I managed to
bring my racing heart down to a normal level and settle back into bed.
I was about to fall asleep when a buzz came from the top of
my dresser. My blood turned to ice and I
felt woozy. Carefully, I picked up the phone and opened the message. It read:
“No, we heard it too!” The entire room spun. It had become very clear that we
were indeed dealing with a terrifying beast that had managed to somehow
infiltrate the apartment. While it wasn’t exactly Fort Nox, we locked the doors
most of the time, and it was hard to imagine a way in which an animal larger
than a mouse could have got in.
I had to act fast. Using my mad ninja skills, I jumped from
the bed and ran to the wall where I have a small machete mounted. I removed it
from its scabbard and called my roommate. The voice that answered was bleary,
and far too calm for the events at hand.
“Meet me in the hallway in three seconds.”
“No way man, I’m not going out there!”
“I’m not going out there alone! F&*$ that!”
“Here talk to Ciara” He handed the phone to my other
roommate, and I was met with more reluctance.
“I’m in bed, I’m not coming out into the hallway.” Desperate
for any sort of camaraderie, I called out to the wall separating me from my
other roommate Braden. I yelled twice and received no response other than
laughing from Ciara on the other side of the phone.
“Fine, I’m going out there. Get ready guys!” I stood next to
my door, tensed, machete in hand, ready to take down the chupacapra that was
most likely waiting outside to eat me. “ONE, TWO, THREE!” I burst through the
door making stabbing motions at the air, just in case the beast had decided to
charge me, or had heard my plan to attack it. You can never be too sure that
the creature you are fighting hasn’t gained sentience and understood your
method of attack. I’ve seen deep blue sea; it did not go well for them. On that
side note, please God, never genetically engineer super-intelligent sharks…
As I went from door to door, kicking them open (They were
all slightly ajar, so they didn’t break), I continued yelling, and swiping in
large arcs at nothing. It was terrifying, but it was also the closest I have
ever been to real life Mortal Kombat, which was pretty sweet.
 |
| A Hill People Pickaxe |
Emboldened by my bravery roommate Loren stepped out of his
room. He was armed with a pickaxe that for some reason he kept in his room.
Also it is worth mentioning that this pickaxe is very sharp on one side, and
looks like it is more a tool hill-people use for killing unsuspecting tourists,
rather than something a mountain climber or a miner would use. Even if there is
a monster in my apartment, the pickaxe might need to be higher on the worry
priority list.
Now with safety in numbers, we began to check inside the
other rooms which had previously been far too dark and scary to go in
alone. While we were looking we were
joined by my other roommate Braden, who had no doubt been woken by the shouting
and door kicking…
As we searched several theories were formed as to what the
monster might have been. I of course was still championing the idea that it was
some sort of aggravated raccoon filled with bloodlust or a super-intelligent
half shark, half chupacapra, but my roommates were more practical. For
instance: Loren had seen a rat running around outside the apartment earlier
that day, and thought that it might have stowed away in a couch that we were
“airing out” that day… It’s college ok? We air out couches to make them less
gross.
Another idea was that it could have been the water heater
making gurgling noises, but I wasn’t having any of it. After a search around
the apartment and the porch we came to the conclusion that if it had been an
animal, it was now long gone, or scared half to death. I was not appeased by this
conclusion, and so Braden had the idea of setting a sort of trap for it.
We laid out sunflower seeds on a plate in the middle of the
hallway on a plate in a perfect circle. The idea being that if any of them were
disturbed then there was indeed an animal in the apartment, and that we would
go hunting again. I also made both of them swear that if the noise happened
again, we would meet in the hallway in three seconds, weapons in hand.
With that, we all went to sleep, the others no doubt
peacefully, me with the machete next to the bed, and an ear out for scary
creatures….
The next morning the seeds were undisturbed, but I still
maintain that somewhere within our walls the apartment chupacapra lies in wait
for when we let our guard down…
