Chupacabra. Belarus

A problem with an unknown mysterious creature at night. Residents of several streets of the urban settlement of Ivenets are in a panic. For more than a month, they have been terrorized by an unknown mysterious creature that cruelly kills pets at night and disappears with impunity. A bear? A lynx? A dog? Or maybe Chupacabra again? The latest version sounds more and more often here and actively fuels fears. The situation is further complicated by the fact that people have to defend themselves exclusively on their own - no authority is ready to provide small-scale assistance… Together with the locals in the hunt for the "Chupacabra".

No body— no business

It was early in the morning when 86-year-old Cheslava Fyodorovna went to feed the rabbits and was simply stunned with horror. The cages looked as if they were being crushed by a creature of remarkable strength. The footprints on the ground clearly belonged to a fairly large beast. How did he manage to bend the iron bars? Open a complicated latch-latch? Two three-kilogram rabbits in the lower cages looked like they were alive, only their eyes were torn out and blood was caked on their ears. Moreover, one carcass turned out to be in a completely different cage, and the second was found a few meters from the barn. A brood of 10–day-old baby rabbits disappeared without a trace. Fortunately, someone scared off the predator — he did not manage to strangle the two rabbits in the upper cages. Later, a tunnel was found under the fence…

The children and grandchildren of Cheslav Fyodorovna, who live in Minsk, called all kinds of authorities, because they knew that a similar case was two weeks ago on the neighboring Oktyabrskaya Street. But everywhere - turn away from the gate. The daughter of the victim Raisa does not hide her indignation:

- The executive committee says that you need to call the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Rescuers were sent to the prosecutor's office, and there they were told to write a statement in the district center - Volozhin. Foresters, whose office is just opposite our house, also do not care. What if it's a rabid animal? It is necessary to examine! We have children, where is the guarantee that no one will attack them?

The policemen, who still came on call, said: "There is no human body — there is no case." However, they advised to remove the remaining rabbits and chickens away, you never know. In the evening of the same day, the evacuation of livestock to a more durable barn began. Just in case, they also closed the cats away from trouble. It remained to wait for the morning: will the unknown predator return or not?

"We are afraid to go outside!"

It seems that we had no idea of the scale of the disaster when, together with Natalia, the granddaughter of Cheslav Fyodorovna, we decided to ask the neighbors about the details of the two-week visits of the "chupacabra". Everyone shared their sorrows and sent us to the next house, where more and more terrible stories were waiting for us. Some lost chickens, others lost a kid, and others lost ducks. The Kovalenko family lost nine adult rabbits and three small ones.

The hostess Olga said that her husband discovered the pogrom at five in the morning:

"The cages are wide open, the boards are broken. The tracks look like dog tracks. But it was with what force it was necessary to tear out the doors in the cages! We feed, we raise, and then this… It's scary, we're afraid to go outside. What if he runs into us?"

The spouse immediately inserts an important remark:

"It was like a man opening the cages! He tore one from the bottom, then bent it, gnawed the rabbit's ears and nose… And a week later, the neighbors have the same trouble."

They say that last Saturday night something rattled, apparently, the mysterious creature was returning.

Their neighbor Nina Konstantinovna is also sure that the tracks are dog tracks. Her family was grieving the loss of 15 rabbits at once, and even a brood of babies. Only one little rabbit hid under the boards, and that saved him. Now the baby is taken care of like the apple of an eye, during the day they are taken out into a cage, and at night they hide in a stable. Several rabbit skins were found buried in the ground. A tuft of wool was found on the fence net, and animal tracks led... to the owner of two dogs, who used to work at a meat processing plant. However, they refuse to take wool for research, as a result, Nina Konstantinovna receives only unsubscriptions that there is no evidence. And a message appears on the bulletin board that dog owners need to look after pets. By the way, not so long ago there was an emergency in Iventsa: a dog attacked a child who was returning from school. The boy was in intensive care for a long time.

- The district police officer says that it could be a fox— - says Nina Konstantinovna. — But we don't have foxes, wolves, or bears in the forest: I go for a walk with my dog every day. Vietnamese pigs were bred near the forest, and no one touched them. But hunters say that dogs may well behave this way in pairs.

Other victims doubt this version: they say that the tracks do not prove anything, because the dogs could have run to the smell of meat. So the neighbor of the Kovalenko family, who heard the heartbreaking squeak of rabbits at night and tried to wake up the owners, is sure: no, it's not a dog. The creature moved too slowly, like a bear or a man, silently overcame the fence, and all this time the dogs in the yards were silent, as if they were afraid to raise their voices ...The further away, the more the Ivenetsky story grows with hypotheses and the more acutely the intervention of the authority is required, which will dot the "I" here and calm people down.

Mikhail Nikiforov, General Director of the Scientific and Practical Center of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus for Bioresources:

— It may well be both stray dogs and a wild animal. For example, an old sick fox. Such an animal is not capable of killing anyone in the wild, so it attacks the defenseless. And as for dogs, they are predators, and it is not a problem for them to cope with rabbits, as well as to break fragile cages. In this situation, you need to contact local hunters who deal with wild animals and know their habits