On the morning of January 11, 2014, a resident of the village of Rudakovo found the bodies of his pets in the barn. Nikolai Puzankov works as an ambulance driver at the Tula hospital named after D. Ya. Vanykina, and at home he is breeding rabbits. Not for sale, only for own use. Therefore, there are not many pets, if only there is enough for a family.
In total, Nikolai Alekseevich had 15 animals. Now there are only two of them. On the morning of January 11, Nikolai went to feed his pets and saw that the barn door was open and slightly tilted:
- I remember exactly closing the door. I was dumbfounded - the cages were wide open, and all the rabbits were lying dead in the center of the barn, but there was no blood or bite marks. The intruder took them out of their cages, strangled them and put them in the center of the shed with a slide. And yet the version that it was done by a man disappeared, - said Nikolai Puzankov.
Indeed, who will leave such goodness? As they say, a rabbit is not only valuable fur, but also 3-4 kg of dietary, easily digestible meat. When Nikolai came to his senses, he carefully examined the crime scene. I didn’t call the police, because I’m sure it’s a beast, not a man. The owner showed claw marks on the doorframe, on the cages and inside them.
The scratches left are quite deep and long. Wooden latches and partitions were literally broken open. The cages, by the way, are located at a height of more than a meter. That is, an animal standing on its hind legs, in order to reach the cages, must be at least one and a half meters. The question remains: why did such a large predator kill its victims so carefully and did not even taste them?
Nikolay Puzankov: “The next night I was on guard: I turned on the light and looked out of the window at the entrance to the barn. At about 4 o'clock in the morning I saw a huge beast. He was smaller than a bear, but larger than a dog, with a curved back and large paws. And his fur is brown. I ran for the gun, but when I got out - from the pest and the trail was gone."
What was it? Nikolai Alekseevich looked for answers on the Internet. Only one animal fit the description - a wolverine. The wolverine looks like a bear, but the paws are disproportionately large - 10 cm wide and 9 cm long. The fur of the wolverines is brown with a yellow stripe along the back - it is quite suitable for the description of Nikolai Alexandrovich.
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In addition, the wolverine is omnivorous - it eats both fresh meat and carrion. Maybe something scared her away from the easy prey in the barn, or maybe this is how she prefers to eat rabbits. To find out what kind of animal it was, we turned to Alexei Yevsyunin, a researcher at the Tula Zoo Exotarium:
“It's hard to judge from the story, I haven't seen the animal. According to the description, it really looks like a wolverine, but they do not live with us. If this really is a wolverine, then it has climbed quite far! This is a northern animal, in Russia the southern border of its habitat is in the area of St. Petersburg and the Vologda region - far from Tula."
Maybe you have an idea what kind of "Chupacabra" got into the Tula village?