ohmidog!

A sheriff’s deputy in south Texas caught a mysterious creature on videotape over the weekend, and the footage is heating up the chupacabra debate once again.

Is it a dog? A coyote? Or the legendary bloodsucking beast that has been rumored to have attacked livestock and pets in the southwest since the 1990s?

“You need to record something like this because it’s not everyday you find something that looks like this, running around out in the middle of the county,” said Cpl. Brandon Riedel, who pursued the animal in his car but later lost him.

The short-legged, hairless animal had a long snout that looked like a coyote, Riedel said. But he admitted he wasn’t convinced.

“You know, it’s just kind of one of those things to hear about and talk about, but to actually see something on video that may actually be a live one, that’s pretty amazing,” DeWitt County Sheriff Jode Zavesky said.

Friday’s sighting is just the latest “sighting” of the mythical animal. Last year, a rancher found a dead animal near the town of Cuero that was thought by some to be a chupacabra. Biologists at Texas State University-San Marcos tested DNA taken from the remains of the animal and found it to be a coyote.

“It’s like every good urban legend,” Texas filmmaker Erik McCowan said. “Maybe it’s better to just think it is the chupacabra.”