discovered the 40-pound bodies of three of the animals over four days in July outside her ranch in Cuero, 90 miles southeast of San Antonio.

Canion said she saved the head of the one she found so she could get to the bottom of its ancestry through DNA testing and then mount it for posterity.

Chupacabra means "goat sucker" in Spanish, and it is said to have originated in Puerto Rico and Mexico.

Additional skin samples have been taken to try to determine the cause of the animal's hair loss, Forstner said.          The defendant’s conviction arose out of a business transaction with the

victim, Alpha Sign Company. The defendant was a sticker vendor and regularly sold

merchandise produced by the victim. Normally the defendant would place an order for

certain stickers and the victim would fill the order on a consignment basis. The defendant

was not required to pay for the stickers until after he had sold them. However, in April

1995, the defendant had a substantial outstanding balance regarding the volume of

stickers he had in his possession versus the amount he had paid the victim for those

stickers. As such, the owners and operators of Alpha Sign Company had a meeting with

the defendant in order to come to some type of agreement regarding payment. The

owners