Cinco de Mayo
May. 5th, 2010 04:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danalwynIt's Cinco de Mayo today. It's a reminder that I'm not back in San Diego.
In the US, Cinco de Mayo is generally another one of the ways in which Americans appropriate other people's holidays in order to have an excuse to get drunk, similar to how non-Irish non-Catholics love St. Patrick's day. We don't even know what it's about; who needs history when you have tequila?
There's plenty of drinking in the American southwest too, but Cinco de Mayo has a somewhat more dangerous meaning there. It's not actually a significant date, but is just associated with a) Mexico, and b) the start of May, which is generally when the four-month long border migration season begins. For the next four months, until the September shift starts, a long-running battle will be raging over the Mexican border as thousands of hours of effort are poured into the task of keeping undesirable elements from crossing the border. Where by “undesirable” I mean dangerous, and by “elements”, I mean Chupacabra.
There's a lot of confusion in the American southwest about the chupacabra, the mysterious, partially vampiric, goat-sucking animal of southwestern lore. This is because, to date, nobody has been able to provide the body of a chupacabra for study, or even take relatively good pictures. Most of the sightings of chupacabra involve blood alcohol contents that qualify for legally impaired status, and are hence unreliable. As a result, biologists have no good ways to proceed.
Wikipedia states:
“The most common description of Chupacabra is a reptile-like being, appearing to have leathery or scaly greenish-gray skin and sharp spines or quills running down its back.”
This is not a chupacabra, but is more likely a member of the hellhound family, a variety of demon distantly related to Cerberus. There have been rumors that there are whole packs of those things running loose in the American desert, but so far they have stayed fairly distant from society. A true chupacabra is more like the second definition:
“Another description of Chupacabra, although not as common, describes a strange breed of wild dog. This form is mostly hairless and has a pronounced spinal ridge, unusually pronounced eye sockets, fangs, and claws. It is claimed that this breed might be an example of a dog-like reptile.”
A true chupacabra actually looks much like a coyote, although identifying the difference between them is really fairly trivial. A chupacabra has a slightly longer snout, much duller teeth (due to differences in diet), and a much longer tail when compared to a standard coyote. Most importantly, they are relatively larger.
You can easily tell the difference upon encountering them, assuming you know what you're looking for. If you've ever encountered a coyote while driving an SUV (or other large off-road vehicle), you've noticed that often they will run off the road and then pause and examine you from a distance. Coyotes who stand in front of moving automobiles tend to run afoul of natural selection. If the same vehicle encounters a juvenile chupacabra, the cub will often express more curiosity, sometimes batting the SUV around in its paws before lifting it in its jaws and hurtling it up to six and a half miles from its starting location. Fully grown chupacabra tend to just step on them without noticing.
Chupacabra appear to experience very rapid continuing growth; whereas juvenile chupacabra are only fifty to seventy-five meters in length (not counting the tail), fully grown adults are often several kilometers, and specimens over ten kilometers in length are not unknown. They range freely through most of northern Mexico, although they tend to avoid inhabited areas, and occasionally range into the southwestern United States. The lifecycle of the chupacabra is still mostly a mystery. Most chupacabra seem to spend most of their time in a hibernation state that can last several centuries, during which their body temperature falls and they become virtually indistinguishable from normal mountains.
Despite the name, chupacabra do not subsist on the blood of animals. After all, for a creature that size there is simply not enough developed biomass in the southwest to sustain it. Speculation is that they are partially related to air elementals, and that they continue to perform the ancient erosion of the desert air, at a somewhat increased rate. Chupacabra actually eat rock. They're quite fond of mountains. A brief survey of the southwest reveals that it has a relatively high number of mesas compared to the number of mountains. This is because chupacabra keep eating the tops.
Back in the 1880s or so, when the southwest was still largely unexplored territory, it was not uncommon to come across a field geologist kneeling on the top of what had once (as in yesterday) been a spectacular example of plate tectonic geology, and was now a very flat mesa, yelling “Damn you chupacabras!” One might think that this would cause some problems, but a comprehensive campaign convinced most of their sponsors that field geologists were all on drugs, and that campaign has continued to this day.
Nobody knows where chupacabra come from either, they are not exactly wind elementals, despite the many similarities. In fact, given their general, coyote-like shape, I'm suspicious that Coyote had a hand in their creation. It certainly might explain their generally mischievous disposition. He claims otherwise, but I've long since given up on believing anything that comes out of his mouth, ever since he and Loki started hanging out together.
Nevertheless, the presence of chupacabra has provided a general background of mayhem to the border region for many centuries. For one thing, there are only a limited number of mountains, and now that the southwest is full of people who inexplicably a) want to live in a desert, and b) want to go skiing, those mountains can be prime real estate. Although a small group of native chupacabra live in Arizona's Superstition Mountains (whose peculiar geography allows them to remain mostly undetected, although every once in a while one of them wanders into Ethiopia), you simply can't have giant coyotes wandering around everywhere eating the tops of your mountains. It's hard to explain.
Additionally, the desert wind elemental part has side effects. A chupacabra is surrounded by a low-level aura with a desiccating effect similar to, but stronger then, normal dry desert wind. Normally bodies of water within extremely close range of a chupacabra evaporate at two to three times normal rate, but occasionally this surges to an almost instant dehydration effect. At that point animals anywhere near a chupacabra's footsteps (or napping on top of a sleeping one) are essentially turned almost instantly into jerky, hence the chupacabra's vampiric reputation. For some reason this doesn't work on plants, which is why it's so hard to tell the difference between a chupacabra having passed through, and an invasion of vampiric wolves. One explanation of the waves of drought that periodically sweep the southwest is resonance between a colony of chupacabra that have been hibernating on the banks of the Colorado river for the past five centuries.
As I said, chupacabra spend an inordinate amount of time sleeping in a hibernation state, which is why there are still mountains in the southwest at all. However at any one time there can be up to fifty active chupacabra wandering around northern Mexico. We would prefer that they stay there, but every year about May they seem to start circling north, gradually ambling closer and closer to the border until they cross over, staying there, hidden, until about August. After that they go back to making trouble on the other side of the border.
As you may imagine, it's hard to stop a curious coyote that just happens to be several kilometers long. A great deal of time and effort has gone into this, including a giant electrical fence (failed), a very annoying dog whistle (failed; it seems that they hear in multiple frequencies at once), a very large hose (failed), and a rolled-up newspaper the size of the Empire State Building (that one worked for some strange reason, which doesn't make any sense given that I wouldn't use a regular one on a normal coyote). So far, there have been enough other emergencies keeping our attention that nobody has bothered to do anything large-scale about the chupacabra.
Mexico, of course, isn't happy about this at all. They would love it if the chupacabra all wandered over the US and ate our mountains (and drained our goats) for a while. On the other hand, they can't really object. They keep the chupacabra on their side of the border, and we keep the herds of ghost buffalo, and the giant kachina doll Megazords, on our side.
Being a nation beset with problems, Mexico is trying to imaginatively shoot down two birds with one stone, driving the chupacabra south in the hopes that they can get them to the Yucatan where they can collide with Mexico's other big problem, their large collection of Mayan ruins, and what they hold. I'm not convinced that this will come to anything, but early results appear promising, as in the destruction did not extend to outside a controllable region. On the other hand, herding chupacabra is about as easy as herding cats, so I'm not holding out much hope for a quick fix.
In the meantime, should any chupacabra decide to break through the border, I'm far enough away to not give a damn, but you may want to lift a drink tonight to those brave men and women who keep the nation safe from giant, mountain-eating, goat-sucking coyotes. Thanks suckers. I'm glad I'm not you.
In the US, Cinco de Mayo is generally another one of the ways in which Americans appropriate other people's holidays in order to have an excuse to get drunk, similar to how non-Irish non-Catholics love St. Patrick's day. We don't even know what it's about; who needs history when you have tequila?
There's plenty of drinking in the American southwest too, but Cinco de Mayo has a somewhat more dangerous meaning there. It's not actually a significant date, but is just associated with a) Mexico, and b) the start of May, which is generally when the four-month long border migration season begins. For the next four months, until the September shift starts, a long-running battle will be raging over the Mexican border as thousands of hours of effort are poured into the task of keeping undesirable elements from crossing the border. Where by “undesirable” I mean dangerous, and by “elements”, I mean Chupacabra.
There's a lot of confusion in the American southwest about the chupacabra, the mysterious, partially vampiric, goat-sucking animal of southwestern lore. This is because, to date, nobody has been able to provide the body of a chupacabra for study, or even take relatively good pictures. Most of the sightings of chupacabra involve blood alcohol contents that qualify for legally impaired status, and are hence unreliable. As a result, biologists have no good ways to proceed.
Wikipedia states:
“The most common description of Chupacabra is a reptile-like being, appearing to have leathery or scaly greenish-gray skin and sharp spines or quills running down its back.”
This is not a chupacabra, but is more likely a member of the hellhound family, a variety of demon distantly related to Cerberus. There have been rumors that there are whole packs of those things running loose in the American desert, but so far they have stayed fairly distant from society. A true chupacabra is more like the second definition:
“Another description of Chupacabra, although not as common, describes a strange breed of wild dog. This form is mostly hairless and has a pronounced spinal ridge, unusually pronounced eye sockets, fangs, and claws. It is claimed that this breed might be an example of a dog-like reptile.”
A true chupacabra actually looks much like a coyote, although identifying the difference between them is really fairly trivial. A chupacabra has a slightly longer snout, much duller teeth (due to differences in diet), and a much longer tail when compared to a standard coyote. Most importantly, they are relatively larger.
You can easily tell the difference upon encountering them, assuming you know what you're looking for. If you've ever encountered a coyote while driving an SUV (or other large off-road vehicle), you've noticed that often they will run off the road and then pause and examine you from a distance. Coyotes who stand in front of moving automobiles tend to run afoul of natural selection. If the same vehicle encounters a juvenile chupacabra, the cub will often express more curiosity, sometimes batting the SUV around in its paws before lifting it in its jaws and hurtling it up to six and a half miles from its starting location. Fully grown chupacabra tend to just step on them without noticing.
Chupacabra appear to experience very rapid continuing growth; whereas juvenile chupacabra are only fifty to seventy-five meters in length (not counting the tail), fully grown adults are often several kilometers, and specimens over ten kilometers in length are not unknown. They range freely through most of northern Mexico, although they tend to avoid inhabited areas, and occasionally range into the southwestern United States. The lifecycle of the chupacabra is still mostly a mystery. Most chupacabra seem to spend most of their time in a hibernation state that can last several centuries, during which their body temperature falls and they become virtually indistinguishable from normal mountains.
Despite the name, chupacabra do not subsist on the blood of animals. After all, for a creature that size there is simply not enough developed biomass in the southwest to sustain it. Speculation is that they are partially related to air elementals, and that they continue to perform the ancient erosion of the desert air, at a somewhat increased rate. Chupacabra actually eat rock. They're quite fond of mountains. A brief survey of the southwest reveals that it has a relatively high number of mesas compared to the number of mountains. This is because chupacabra keep eating the tops.
Back in the 1880s or so, when the southwest was still largely unexplored territory, it was not uncommon to come across a field geologist kneeling on the top of what had once (as in yesterday) been a spectacular example of plate tectonic geology, and was now a very flat mesa, yelling “Damn you chupacabras!” One might think that this would cause some problems, but a comprehensive campaign convinced most of their sponsors that field geologists were all on drugs, and that campaign has continued to this day.
Nobody knows where chupacabra come from either, they are not exactly wind elementals, despite the many similarities. In fact, given their general, coyote-like shape, I'm suspicious that Coyote had a hand in their creation. It certainly might explain their generally mischievous disposition. He claims otherwise, but I've long since given up on believing anything that comes out of his mouth, ever since he and Loki started hanging out together.
Nevertheless, the presence of chupacabra has provided a general background of mayhem to the border region for many centuries. For one thing, there are only a limited number of mountains, and now that the southwest is full of people who inexplicably a) want to live in a desert, and b) want to go skiing, those mountains can be prime real estate. Although a small group of native chupacabra live in Arizona's Superstition Mountains (whose peculiar geography allows them to remain mostly undetected, although every once in a while one of them wanders into Ethiopia), you simply can't have giant coyotes wandering around everywhere eating the tops of your mountains. It's hard to explain.
Additionally, the desert wind elemental part has side effects. A chupacabra is surrounded by a low-level aura with a desiccating effect similar to, but stronger then, normal dry desert wind. Normally bodies of water within extremely close range of a chupacabra evaporate at two to three times normal rate, but occasionally this surges to an almost instant dehydration effect. At that point animals anywhere near a chupacabra's footsteps (or napping on top of a sleeping one) are essentially turned almost instantly into jerky, hence the chupacabra's vampiric reputation. For some reason this doesn't work on plants, which is why it's so hard to tell the difference between a chupacabra having passed through, and an invasion of vampiric wolves. One explanation of the waves of drought that periodically sweep the southwest is resonance between a colony of chupacabra that have been hibernating on the banks of the Colorado river for the past five centuries.
As I said, chupacabra spend an inordinate amount of time sleeping in a hibernation state, which is why there are still mountains in the southwest at all. However at any one time there can be up to fifty active chupacabra wandering around northern Mexico. We would prefer that they stay there, but every year about May they seem to start circling north, gradually ambling closer and closer to the border until they cross over, staying there, hidden, until about August. After that they go back to making trouble on the other side of the border.
As you may imagine, it's hard to stop a curious coyote that just happens to be several kilometers long. A great deal of time and effort has gone into this, including a giant electrical fence (failed), a very annoying dog whistle (failed; it seems that they hear in multiple frequencies at once), a very large hose (failed), and a rolled-up newspaper the size of the Empire State Building (that one worked for some strange reason, which doesn't make any sense given that I wouldn't use a regular one on a normal coyote). So far, there have been enough other emergencies keeping our attention that nobody has bothered to do anything large-scale about the chupacabra.
Mexico, of course, isn't happy about this at all. They would love it if the chupacabra all wandered over the US and ate our mountains (and drained our goats) for a while. On the other hand, they can't really object. They keep the chupacabra on their side of the border, and we keep the herds of ghost buffalo, and the giant kachina doll Megazords, on our side.
Being a nation beset with problems, Mexico is trying to imaginatively shoot down two birds with one stone, driving the chupacabra south in the hopes that they can get them to the Yucatan where they can collide with Mexico's other big problem, their large collection of Mayan ruins, and what they hold. I'm not convinced that this will come to anything, but early results appear promising, as in the destruction did not extend to outside a controllable region. On the other hand, herding chupacabra is about as easy as herding cats, so I'm not holding out much hope for a quick fix.
In the meantime, should any chupacabra decide to break through the border, I'm far enough away to not give a damn, but you may want to lift a drink tonight to those brave men and women who keep the nation safe from giant, mountain-eating, goat-sucking coyotes. Thanks suckers. I'm glad I'm not you.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-05 09:55 pm (UTC)Hee. Oh, Dan, when are you going to write that book?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-06 01:08 am (UTC)Oh, how I've missed the Sidejob. <3
I was pretty much cracking up during this whole thing. Thank you for a good read.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-06 01:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-06 01:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-06 01:24 am (UTC)I've got to start working on these again.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-06 01:25 am (UTC)I'm sorry it's going badly. Hopefully it will get better soon.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-06 03:36 am (UTC)TRUFAX
Either that or very drunk. Geologists need no help from any outside sources to continue that campaign themselves (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/12/15943/). XD
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-06 12:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-06 02:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-11 08:36 pm (UTC)