Chupacabra in Transcarpathia: petrified pets did not even try to escape. And this is the seventh case of an attack by an unknown animal on animals in 2012 in the region.
Going out into the yard in the morning, Olga Badida, a resident of the Dravtsy microdistrict on the outskirts of Uzhgorod, saw a terrible picture: several dozen carcasses of rabbits, rabbits, chickens and large 10-kg turkeys are scattered throughout the yard, wooden cages are broken, doors are torn off metal hinges and are lying on earth. The bloody massacre will not leave indifferent even a cold-blooded person, let alone the mistress, who in the morning went out into the yard to feed domestic animals.
“There were 15 rabbits in the lower cage,” says Olga Badida. - In the adjacent, three-tiered cage, there are ten 2-month-old females, and above them there is another female with five rabbits. All are strangled. In the lower cage sat an adult turkey with ten chickens. Here they are lying on the ground …
In total, according to Olga Badida, about 50 rabbits, 10 chickens, a rooster, and three turkeys were strangled or torn apart. Only the rabbits from the upper cage survived - dairy, only two weeks old. And also a hen sitting on eggs in the lower side cage, and one adult turkey. She is wounded, with broken bones and scalped skin, so she will have to be slaughtered …
Photo: fakty.ua
At midnight Olga went out into the yard and everything was in order. The owners have a dog - a cross between a shepherd and a collie. She often guarded the animals by laying down under their cages, but that night she was locked in the house (the dog began to estrus). It is hard to imagine that such a cruel reprisal against rabbits and birds could have been silent, nevertheless the owners did not hear anything.
A suburb of Uzhgorod, the Dravtsy microdistrict, is a former village, there are only private farms. Behind vegetable gardens and orchards there is a field, a few kilometers away - a small forest, but large predators have never been found there. And small ones, for example a fox, ferret or weasel, cannot do this. In the cages, even located at a height of one and a half meters, the doors have been torn off from the iron hinges "with roots"; large rabbits and adult turkeys have been pulled out and torn apart.
Promotional video:
The wooden door of one of the cages is gnawed by teeth, and the ground around it is scratched with claws. Apparently, the beast furiously tried to break open the door, and when the metal latch did not give in, tore out the back boards in the cage and got to the unfortunate turkey.
Neighbors, who also have a lot of domestic animals, but they were not touched, suggested that feral dogs could tear the animals to pieces. However, the veterinarians who arrived at the site deny this.
Photo: fakty.ua
“The animals died either from strangulation or from loss of blood,” explained the head of the Uzhgorod veterinary clinic, Yuri Shpolarich. - Almost all rabbits have fractured (bitten) cervical vertebrae, some have completely scalped skin, fractured bones. Several animals with severed heads. At the same time, the carcasses are practically not eaten. If the animal could break the cages on the third tier and pull out large adult rabbits, then it was both tall and very strong. Who exactly could have done this, I cannot say, in my practice nothing like this has happened before …
“A three-month-old rabbit at the market costs from 350 to 450 hryvnias,” Olga almost cries. - A kilogram of rabbit meat is 60-65 hryvnia, and a live female weighs about five kilograms. For a turkey chicken they ask for 25 hryvnia. Here, - the woman points at the bloody carcasses, - speaking offhand, there is about five thousand hryvnia.
The villagers say that this is not the first such incident in Dravtsy. Two weeks ago, a similar massacre took place at one of Olga Badida's neighbors. Even the dog, let loose for the night from the chain, did not help.
“The brown-brown beast resembled a very thin large dog” - It was the same for me, - says Olga's neighbor Galina Sinichka, who, having heard about the emergency, went to the victim. - 20 rabbits are torn or strangled, and cages with metal doors are smashed to smithereens. In the morning the carcasses were still warm, which means that everything happened before dawn. But we did not use meat, we were afraid that the animals were torn apart by someone mad …
We slept soundly that night, but the neighbor heard everything. Around three o'clock in the morning, a terrible dog barking and a squeak of rabbits began. They squeak loudly when they are hammered. A neighbor went out into the yard and thought that they were probably stealing rabbits from us, but for some reason she did not call us. Her dog in fear ran into the house and hid under the sofa. And we found ours in the morning under the porch, we couldn't get her out, I was so scared …
Then they heard that there were similar cases in neighboring Baranintsy. There the mistress, who found her animals torn to pieces in the morning, had to call an ambulance. I told people that they needed to sound the alarm, because something bad had started up in the village, and they told me: “What’s there! Not necessary . So they waited …
The woman's words were confirmed literally a day later. On Thursday night, an unknown animal made another bloody raid in neighboring Baranintsy - just a few kilometers from Dravets. At the same time, people saw him, though briefly.
“At about half past five in the morning, my mother heard the splash of water in the backyard, turned on the light and left the house,” says Mikhail Gavrilets, a resident of Baranintsov. - And I saw a brown-brown beast rushing from the yard into the garden and further into the field. He was about 60 centimeters high and looked like a very thin large dog. The beast rushed under the metal mesh with such speed that the entire fence rattled. And in the yard there were eight gnawed ducks and two chickens.
We keep the bird at night behind a metal fence that closes with a hook. The gate was open, and a hook of thick steel wire was curved. If mom hadn't come out, I think all 20 ducks and 12 chickens would have died. Some of the wounded birds were still alive, albeit with bites under the left wing and around the neck. They sat on the ground motionless, as if paralyzed. Not a single duck was eaten, just killed. In the morning, on the metal mesh, under which the beast had broken through, I found its coat - light brown, with white and black veins, very hard. Part of it was taken by veterinarians.
About two weeks ago, the same attack was made on neighbors - rabbits and chickens were killed. On some of the cages, the metal mesh was pulled apart, and through the hole formed, adult five-kilogram rabbits were taken out and bitten. Even a person cannot stretch the mesh with his bare hands; this requires a lot of strength. The neighbor's dog heard everything and barked, but it was not aggressive, but frightened barking.
Olga from Dravtsy said: the dog handlers came to her with a dog, but the dog, having sniffed one of the dead carcasses, immediately backed away and sat on its tail. It can be seen that the beast gives off something that terrifies the animals. And he lives somewhere nearby, because since the beginning of the year this is the seventh case in nearby villages!
People who managed to see the animal note its similarity to a kangaroo - short front legs and long hind legs
There is an interesting pattern in recent attacks. First, the beast killed all the living creatures of Galina Sinichka in Dravtsy, two days later it paid a visit to the neighbors of Mikhail Gavrilets in Baranintsy. Then there was a lull for two weeks. At the beginning of this week - a new attack, again in Dravtsy, and in the vicinity of the first - at Olga Badida. And two days later - again Baranintsy, and again in the neighborhood - at Mikhail Gavrilts. What kind of animal is it that so carefully selects its hunting grounds?
When the material was already being prepared for printing, the results of a laboratory study of veterinary medicine became known.
“The cause of death of domestic animals is bitten and lacerated wounds inflicted by a large beast,” says Yuri Shpolarich. - Almost all internal organs of the dead were damaged, nothing survived. And clearly pronounced bite wounds near the head, on the neck, on the back. What exactly is this beast, experts cannot establish, it is not in their competence. The forensic experts who examined the carcasses suggested that the animals were bitten by a large dog.
But we reject this assumption. A number of circumstances indicate that this is a different creature. It would take a dog one or two minutes for each individual to pull the rabbits out of the cage and bite their cervical vertebrae, and it would be accompanied by a lot of noise. And then the slaughter of rabbits, for example, would take several hours, or a whole pack of dogs was working. However, nothing was trampled in the garden, and all the animals died in a maximum of half an hour.
This means that this animal can jump, and, possibly, move not only on four, but also on two legs. To climb to the third tier of cages and get a rabbit huddled in the far corner, you need to be long - at least 1.2 meters excluding the tail, have a powerful paw with retractable claws.
Why were so many animals killed, and none of them even tried to escape, to escape? Why were even the dogs afraid of him? Because the smell of this animal, unknown to pets, caused panic and numbness in them.
Finally, the nature of the bites, tooth prints. The holes from them are round, as if from large nails, and the depth of penetration is four to five centimeters. A dog or a wolf's teeth are flattened and curved, like a saber, but there are animals with round teeth - representatives of felines or weasels.
Therefore, we came to the conclusion that the beast that easily jumped over the fence and did not trample anything in the garden could be either a big cat or a weasel. Of the feline, similar parameters in lynx or exotic animals - oncelot, caracal (steppe lynx), serval. True, the last three live in North America, Africa or Central Asia. And from the weasel it could be a wolverine - the most powerful of the named predators, which is dangerous even for humans. By the way, the wolverine was found in Transcarpathia until the 19th century, but then it was exterminated.
Attacks by an unknown animal on pets are recorded in different regions of Ukraine. Many people who managed to see him note some similarities with a kangaroo - an elongated muzzle, short front legs, long hind legs. Representatives of the weasel look the same, their hind legs are twice as long as the front ones. But in order to accurately identify the beast, an integrated approach is needed with the involvement of scientific institutions. We will send samples of wool found during the last attack in Baranintsy to Kiev for a species examination. Let's see what she will show …