They want us. They need us. They might just try to eat us.

Ok. So a lizard monkey with gigantic claws was charging me.

I cannot even begin to convey the pants shitting level of terror that I experienced in that moment. Not that I actually shit my pants, and my erection from what was almost a wet dream prevented me from pissing them, but it was a really fucking near thing.

What? Yes, I obviously survived. And the lack of serious laceration scarring on my face is a testament to the fact that the little bastard didn’t even come close. But if it hadn’t been for Anwyn…

I guess I’m getting a little ahead of myself again, so where was I? Oh! Right! The little green fucker was charging at me. Why didn’t he get me? Well, apparently Anwyn carried a taser.

Yeah, I guess I did bury the lead there. So it was bearing down on me like it wanted to play jump rope with my intestines. Those needle claws were mere inches from my face, because yeah, that fucker was fast, when it suddenly stopped moving forward and just sort of started convulsing like the kid with epilepsy that fished out in my gym class sophmore year of high school, and just dropped.

I’m less than proud that I reacted the way I did and delivered a fear driven Timberland to its head. After that it didn’t do much of anything except breathe.

Well, it seems that monster hunting kit bags include not just a taser but zip ties and ketamine. We had the little fella all hooked up and sleeping in the trunk in the space of about thirty minutes.

“Ok. So what the fuck is it?” I finally asked after all the exertion. My adrenaline was seeping out of me by this point, leaving me a bit of a wreck.

“What it is doesn’t make sense. They’re not supposed to be this far north.” There she went with the fucking cryptic answers again.

“Aaaaand?”

I suppose my frustration must have been showing because she sheepishly sighed and said, “El Chupacabra.”

“Seriously?” Ok. That kind of tracked, inasmuch as anything had in the last few days. The fact that this made sense to me should clue you in a little about where my head was at the time.

“Yep. Goat sucker.” She huffed. “But like I said, they don’t usually pop up this far north. Usually the farthest they get is Arizona. Anything else is too damn cold for ‘em.”

“So… do we have to worry that there’s more of ‘em out there?”

“Nope. They’re solitary. Near as anyone can tell they reproduce asexually too, although there are stories of a huge nest of them down in the Everglades.”

“What are we gonna do with it?”

“They’re sort of like the rodents of the cryptozoology scene. Predatory pests. There are some debates as to whether or not they qualify as sentient, and I prefer to err on the side of caution, so killing it is out of the question. Then again, taking it out into the Boundary Waters and just dumping it off would come down to the same thing in a couple months, not to mention the hassle of introducing an invasive species.”

“So…”

“We’re going to dope it to the eyeballs and FedEx overnight it to Nuevo Laredo.”

“Ok. Stupid question. Won’t transporting a living critter across the border raise some eyebrows?”

“You’d think it would, but people have a tendency to ignore any real evidence of anything that violates the paradigm. The vast majority of the world is firmly in the camp of ‘cryptids aren’t real’ so they basically have a gigantic neon sign over top of ‘em flashing the words ‘Somebody Else’s Problem’. You have to have the spark of something to even perceive their existence.”

“What, so if customs inspects it they’ll find an empty crate?”

“More likely to perceive it as a big monitor lizard or something. Either way it’ll be back on home turf.” Her expression shifted to pensive. “What I’m most curious about is what the fucker is doing here.”

“So… one question. If it’s a goat sucker, why is it stealing chickens?”

The laughter that rang through the air in response to my question almost made getting attacked by a bipedal vampiric lizard worth it.

(Title: “Scary Little Green Men” by Ozzy Osbourne)