Folks, the best season in Red Raider football history is nearing an end, and that only means one thing for Texas Tech fans.  Order State Champs patch for our letter jackets, take to the road for basketball season, and hit on chicks from rival schools at the concession stand, whose ass you kicked in football.  This will be the best 9 months of your Red Raider football fan life.  Enjoy it while it lasts because we deserved it.  So, get out there and support Pat Knight and the Red Raiders on the basketball court.  They’re a fun team to watch this season. 

With that being said, basketball is not our forte around here and reports will become more sporadic in the offseason.  So to fill in some space, we’re going to periodically have an Outdoor feature piece just like your regional paper on Sundays.  However, we’ll try to focus on quality over quantity and our initial feature definitely delivers. 

This week’s subject will focus on an interesting and controversial subject.  Let me set the story up for those of you out there who aren’t up to date. 

On Monday, December 1^st, I receive a text message from my dad.  Right then, I knew this had to be big and my instincts were correct.  I know my dad doesn’t know how to use text message.  Sure enough, it’s a picture of what appears to be a dead wolf on the bed of a pickup. 

 

Subject of Text Message:  Wolfacabra?

Curiosity got the best of me, and after asking around some, I began to get conflicting reports of what exactly the beast was.  Coyote, wolf, hybrid, etc. and rumors were even floating around about a northern breed of Chupacabra that will indeed produce a coat.  At this point, I had no other option than to get involved. 

I recruited my dad to help with this groundbreaking project, which made things roll a lot faster.  He’s out combing the  Texas plains for the carcass as we speak.  My advice to him was take plenty of ammo as there’s a rotting longhorn carcass laying out there somewhere that will surely be attracting some wily predators by this point.  Through a little phone work, I was able to nab an exclusive interview with Claude, Texas resident Dwayne Tyree, who was forced to extinguish the beast after it charged him. 

Wolf

I’ll try to relay this story as accurately as possible, as Mr. Tyree so graciously explained to me.  On Sunday, November 23, 2008, Mr. Tyree’s 15-year old son, Jeffrey, was headed to feed some cattle in a pasture on Mulberry Canyon, 11 miles south of Claude, Texas in the heart of Indian Country, an area today known as Armstrong County.  Mulberry Creek is a tributary that feeds into the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River, which is the mothership of erosion that forms the massive Palo Duro Canyon. 

As young Jeffrey pulled up to the gate, he began to notice some large paw prints on the ground.  Much larger than anything he had seen, anyway.  Jeffrey grabbed his camera out of the pickup and began snapping pictures of the large tracks on his path to the gate.  When he neared the gate, Jeffrey heard something growling in the brush near him.  Soon, a large canine-type creature revealed itself and Jeffrey was forced to retreat to the safety of the pickup.  He called his father, Dwayne, who showed up soon with a .222 caliber rifle. 

Dwayne was skeptical on the drive, but sensed the urgency in Jeffrey’s voice.  As he approached the gate, where his son’s pickup was parked, Dwayne noticed the animal trot away and stop in the middle of the road.  At this point, Dwayne was no longer a skeptic.  He said the animal was much larger than a coyote standing approximately 3-4 inches above his knee.  Now, if we’re using Gary Patterson’s knee for scale, this would fit the description of your grandmother’s lap dog.  However, on a man that gets his own bumper car at the State Fair, it’s a lot bigger than any coyote I’ve seen in the wild. 

Coyote

Dwayne exited the vehicle, looked around for game wardens, and fired a warning shot at the feet of the animal, which was standing about 25 yards away.  At that point, the animal flinched, became infuriated, and made its charge of death directly towards the threat.  Dwayne reacted quickly as the distance closed and was able to stop the hound from hell in its tracks with an oblong piece of lead moving at 3200 feet per second.  It was just fast enough.  Upon further inspection, the animal showed no visual signs of rabies.

Two different County Agents profiled the carcass, with one leaning towards wolf and the other one leaning towards “yeah, one of them hybrids, he saw in his alley last week”.  Okay?    

We sought out the expert opinion of The Tortilla Retort’s resident veterinarian, papadoc, who knows canines better than Richard Gere knows domesticated rodents.  Papadoc holds a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from the esteemed Texas A&M University.  He literally worships dogs, so will be perfect for this project.  Although we were only able to provide photos at this point, papadoc’s opinion was that it looked like some kind of wolf or maybe a cross.  Papadoc, Sr. and J&B were also on hand and agreed with the county agent theory on common hybrid wolves roaming the streets of Claude for decades. 

Hairless Chupacabra

Why is this event of significance?  Well, to my knowledge and research, it could be the first confirmed wolf killed in the state of  Texas since December 28, 1970.  Also, if it were indeed to classify out as a wolf, what subspecies would that be and how did it show up in the Texas Panhandle?  Had budget cuts in the Amarillo Zoo dropped security to levels not seen since the infamous spider monkey theft of 1993?  Was this similar to the moose that appeared near Spearman, Texas the summer of the Yellowstone fire?  Could this animal be of the Mexican Wolf species and swam its way north in hopes of a better life?  Or was this simply a case of domesticity gone bad? 

Although Lobo Wolves once roamed the Palo Duro Canyon, they were considered extinct from the western United States by the 1920s.  Chupacabra you say?  Get out of town.  Way too big for those pesky little blood-sucking bastards.  Scavengers and killers of small goats they are.  As seen in the picture, this is a well designed predator built to take down game of a measurable size.  Since all of us are now left with more questions than we started, we here at the Tortilla Retort are dedicated to getting to the bottom of this.  We’ve called in some experts to help us out, and with the assistance of Jeffrey and Dwayne, we’ll keep you informed as to the identity of the source of anyone’s worst nightmare.  Stay tuned……

Just prior to attack.

Tim’s Malamute.

All vet bills are to be forwarded to Sailor Ripley at Barking Carnival.