See? I TOLD You There Are Chupacabras Living In Our Backyard

Hmph. Maybe now they will believe me.

And by “they,” I mean, of course, “my husband.” My normally quite rational, logical husband, who refuses to look at the evidence and surmise, as I have, that there are chupacabras living in our backyard.

Or, if not chupacabraS, then at least *a* chupacabra.

I first learned the monsters lived in our backyard about a year ago, which I wrote about here.

Since my discovery, I’ve had to make some changes in my life. I have learned that if I only venture into the backyard during daylight hours, when the beasties are asleep or hiding, I can pretend that we live in a relatively safe urban environment (the helicopters hovering overhead notwithstanding).

You know—it ain’t just a river in Egypt, and all that.

But yesterday afternoon, my blissful bubble of denial was popped.

I stepped out onto the sunny back stoop, heading to the garage to do laundry. And I immediately noticed that something weird had appeared in our backyard overnight.

It was an almost-perfect circle of white and gray seagull feathers.

And not just a few feathers. A WHOLE BIRD’S worth of feathers. In a one-foot-diameter circle in the middle of our backyard.

I knew this was not good news. I knew that there was not some naked and embarrassed seagull shivering in a tree somewhere regretting the last night’s drunken avian adventures.

And I knew that there must be more than just feathers in that circle, and that I was just too far away to see what. I was going to have to assess the damage and decide how to clean it up.

So, imagine my surprise when I reached the circle of feathers and found…just feathers.

No corpse. No skeleton. No guts. Nothing. Just feathers.

Obviously.

Now you tell me that’s not the sign of a chupacabra. Anything else that eats seagulls would have left
more…leftovers, right?

Of course, you’re probably thinking of the more usual urban predators. I thought that too. I thought, despite the weird circle pattern and the lack of bones and such, that maybe a cat or a hawk had just chosen our backyard to feast.

But then I remembered the bird feeder.

A few months ago, I bought a simple, plastic, tube-shaped bird feeder and hung it with twine from a tree in our backyard. My boys and I enjoyed watching the birds it attracted along with the neighborhood squirrels, who couldn’t quite work out how to climb down the twine and get at the birdseed. “What a good mom I am,” I thought more than once. “Look at me providing this educational experience for my children.”

Little did I know that I was actually putting their precious lives in danger by attracting a dangerous mythical creature to our backyard.

Because, one day, the bird feeder fell out of the tree.

At the time, I was pretty sure the a-hole squirrels chewed through the twine. Makes sense, right? My husband picked it up and put it on our back stoop, figuring we’d re-hang it the next day.

But the next day? The next day, we found the bird feeder in the middle of the yard. Something had dragged it off the stoop and had feasted on the remaining birdseed.

My poor, naïve husband blamed the squirrels again. I, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure. I mean, how strong ARE these squirrels? Are they working together? Have they evolved to the point where they have started to use tools?

NOT the face of evil. Sorry.

No. Of course not. Clearly, the chupacabra was back. But, because I am a good wife I smiled and nodded at my delusional husband and placed the bird feeder on top of the water heater, whose top stands about 5 feet off the ground. I still thought I’d fill it up and re-hang it.

Yeah, right.

Because the next day??? The next day, the birdfeeder was back in the middle of the yard. SOMETHING had climbed the smooth-sided aluminum box that houses our water heater, grabbed the birdfeeder, dragged it out to the yard, licked it clean and then—adding insult to injury—chewed a big hole in it, rendering it useless.

I threw the dumb birdfeeder away, thinking optimistically that at least the chupacabra would leave us alone now that there was no food left in our backyard.

Which brings us back to yesterday and the circle of feathers.

And the fact that I am currently accepting any and all suggestions for chupacabra extermination.

Why I Won't Be Doing My Family's Laundry Any More

Not long ago, I informed my family that I would no longer be doing their laundry.

No, this is not one of those Lifetime Movie of the Week things about a disgruntled housewife who goes on strike against her ungrateful family. In fact, I don’t really mind being my family’s Head Washerwoman. It’s fairly easy and has immediate results—my kind of chore.

Nope, nope, nope.

However, I won’t be doing it any more.

You see, our washer and dryer are in the garage. The garage is attached to the house, but to get there you have to walk out of the house and about 10 feet through the backyard to the back door of the garage.

No problem, right?

Well, actually, there have always been two major problems with this set-up: Son 1 and Son 2. During the day, I have to leave them briefly unattended in the house if I want to do laundry. Thanks to Murphy’s Laws of Parenting, I know that even if I am gone for literally ONE FREAKIN’ MINUTE, that will be the time that they either try to fight each other to the death or that one of them will attempt to fly from the couch to the coffee table with disastrous results.

So let’s just say I have learned from experience that daytime laundry isn’t worth it.

That leaves laundry for the evening, after my rambunctious darlings have gone to bed. Until recently, this was no problem. I’d throw clothes in the washer, then settle down to watch The Bachelorette, er, PBS.

But then I realized that my backyard at night is a scary and dangerous place.

And so I can’t go out there after dark. Ever. Again.

I learned this a couple of weeks ago when I blithely headed out to do laundry. I heard a noise at the back of my (fairly small) yard, so I peered through the semi-darkness and saw a shape on the brick wall back there. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw it was a HUGE raccoon—like, the size of a golden retriever, at least. (MAYBE a large German Shepherd, even. He was big. BIG.) Anyway, he looked at me, arched his back, and let out a hiss that said, roughly translated, “I will eat you alive and then poop you out all over your laundry if you so much as look at me again.”

So that was the end of laundry for THAT night.

Contemporary legend? Or TOTALLY REAL??

The next night I stayed up late writing. At about midnight, a round of horrible screeching and screaming erupted right outside our front door. It sounded at first like cats, but as it went on it became clear that it was something else. I peeked out the door, but I couldn’t find the source. Eventually, the screaming evolved into enraged chattering that went on for over an hour.  I knew there was just one thing that could be making such a noise: a chupacabra.

OK, yes, I realize that a more rational answer would have been “a raccoon.” I had just seen one in the neighborhood, after all. But it was past midnight, dark and quiet, and my thoughts turned naturally toward this less-likely probability. As the chattering continued into its second hour, I became more concerned. I called animal control.

NO, I did not tell the nice lady who answered that there was a chupacabra outside my house. I may BE crazy, but I don’t like to APPEAR to be crazy. I explained the noise to her and she said, surprisingly, “Sounds like a raccoon to me.”

Ummmm…sure.

“Well,” I said, going with this absurd raccoon theory, “could it be injured? It’s making a lot of noise.”

“Is it in the street? Did it get hit by a car?” she asked.

The face of evil

“No,” I replied. “It’s definitely in a tree.”           

“Then it’s not injured,” she said. “Raccoons don’t get injured. They’re way too aggressive. They win every fight they’re in.”

STOP.

WHAT?

“Raccoons don’t get injured??? Like, ever???” I asked.

“Nope!” she answered cheerfully, before informing me that there was nothing she could do about the devil menacing my neighborhood.

This news about raccoons bothered me. I mean, I knew raccoons were mean garbage-eaters, but now I learn that they are actually INVINCIBLE, evil baby-killers? (<--That part is just me extrapolating from the information I have. Seems reasonable.) Nope. Never leaving the house after dark again.

I woke up my husband to inform him of this turn of events re: his dirty clothes, but I didn’t have to say much because just at that moment the raccoon/chupacabra ran screaming right under our bedroom window and over the fence into our backyard. Where it went from there, I don’t know, because I haven’t been out there since.

OK, that’s not wholly true. I did get desperate for clean clothes last night, so I snuck to the garage with my super-beam, heavy duty, could-beat-a-raccoon-off-of-me-if-not-actually-injure-it flashlight. Out of curiosity, I flashed it around the backyard to see what was out. No raccoons. No chupacabras. But the light did shine momentarily on what turned out to be a spider web in a corner. I went to check it out and what did I find? Not much. Nothing, in fact, except for A BIG BLACK WIDOW SPIDER conveniently hanging belly-side-up as if to say, “That’s right! Check out my red hourglass! Just like you’ve seen on Google late at night when you should be sleeping or doing laundry!” If spiders had fingers, this one would have been flipping me off.

Oh, look! A spider! I'll just go check it--aaaaarrrgggghh!

Well, half a can of Raid Flea and Tick Spray (it’s all we had) followed by a phone book squish-and-smear (you know what I mean), and I had taken care of that cheeky spider. But not before it screamed out in spiderese to all its friends and family about what I was doing. (<--Again, extrapolating.) So I think it’s fair to expect that they will all be out and coming to exact revenge on me each night at sunset, along with the super-raccoons.

Which is why I won’t be doing laundry ever again.

photo credit: nal from miami via photo pin cc photo credit: fingle via photo pin cc photo credit: EJP Photo via photo pin cc