No, folks, that wasn't a chupacabra caught on camera in a Texas state park, just a badger
LOWER RIO GRANDE VALLEY — There’s almost always something afoot in the junglelike wilds of the deepest part of South Texas. Coatis, ocelots, maybe a stray jaguarundi that shows up on a trail camera posted near a water source.
But folks at Texas Parks and Wildlife were a little perplexed by an animal that appeared on a camera at Bentsen-Rio Grande State Park near Mission. This park is a truly wild place tucked into a bend of the Rio Grande that's home to a number of wild animals.
In a Facebook post shortly after the picture was found on the camera at the park, officials speculated about exactly what they were seeing in the hazy photo snapped at night as the critter fed past the location.
“We’re scratching our heads trying to identify this elusive creature,” the post said. “Is it a new species? An escapee from a nearby zoo? Or just a park ranger in disguise? Regardless, it’s thrilling to see such an incredible animal in its natural habitat.”
Obviously, the poster of that paragraph was having a little fun, but I had to cringe just slightly at the wording, since it read like something one might hear on “Paranormal Caught on Camera,” a cable conspiracy-theory/UFO/ghost story program that I’ve kind of gotten hooked on in my old age.
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That stuff is how we find ourselves inundated with weird stories about Bigfoot sightings and people claiming that they have electronic devices that can translate ghostly energy into actual voices to prove that ghosts are real. It was especially problematic since anyone with any experience in the outdoors could see that the animal was clearly a badger.
TPWD officials later clarified that they believed it to be a badger, but that could have been too late to tamp down an internet rumor that this was some visitor from the planet Badgerino in the Rodentia segment of a distant galaxy. We already have far too many rumors and outlandish stories about Bigfoot animals terrorizing folks (some of them in Texas) who wander into the animals’ territory.
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This stuff goes back to our collective desire to be scared and to think we have hope of an undiscovered species living out there somewhere.
But I honestly believe — and there are plenty of folks who spend their lives in the woods who agree — that there is no Bigfoot and no extraterrestrial imps live in our backyards. And by the way, Elvis is dead!
So let’s try to keep the dumb April Fools stunts in third grade where they belong and not encourage wild mental meanderings among our more suggestible citizens.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: TPWD camera screen grab of a badger makes the internet go crazy
