Chupacabra-Like Creature Attacking Filipinos[Original headline: Carcar folk ready weapons
against ‘evil dog]
Stray dogs may no longer be heard growling in Carcar, Cebu, but residents are arming themselves with spears and prayers for a possible return of the canines gone mad.
Despite the killing of two rabid dogs last week, the hunt continues for what the superstitious in town believe as animals “sent by the devil to disturb their peace.” They believe the lull is temporary.
Tales of dog attack run from the scary to the funny, the dogs’ descriptions from the spooky to the surreal. But just as one thinks of the dog scare in Carcar as empty tabloid material, the victims have their dog bites to prove their stories.
Renato Dayota, 49, was strolling down a road in Ocaña, Carcar last July 8 when a dog “with bloodshot eyes and unusually short forelegs” attacked him, biting a fist-sized chunk of flesh off his left leg.
Neighbor Jesus Sta. Ana rush to the rescue but ended up wounded himself.
Arlene Arpay, 26, of Valladolid, Carcar, was waiting for a ride to the public market last July 2 when a “strange looking” dog charged at her and bit her twice, in the hips and arm.
While Arpay was being treated at the hospital, two other residents in a neighboring sitio were wrestling with dogs described by one town official as looking “more like kangaroos.”
In two weeks, the dogs ended the rampage, leaving at least 24 residents of Barangays Ocaña, Liboron, Valladolid and Poblacion III wounded and scared.
The attacks allegedly claimed the life of a seven-year-old boy in Valladolid, though an official report has yet to reach the authorities.
Wild talks about the attacks spread quickly. The animals could fly. They don’t bark but growl. They are whimpering puppies in the day, raving canines at night. One of the dogs is said to be married to an old woman in tattered clothes.
Believe it or not, the victims told Sun.Star.
At a loss on how to explain the problem, town officials agreed to impound all stray dogs and execute them when no claimants appear in three days.
Equipped with public address system, a government vehicle will roam the streets, carrying warnings of possible attacks.
Dayota himself isn’t taking any chances. Like any town folk who succumb to superstition, he has armed himself with bamboo spears sharpened at the tip. Plus extra care and a little prayer, that would do it, he said.
• Story originally published by •
Sun.Star Daily, Cebu / Philippines | Lorenzo P. Niñal
- July 14 2001
