Community Corner

Ridgewood's Mystery Animal Identified

Wildlife expert doesn't believe the animal wandering around the Ridgewood Duck Pond is a coyote or a chupacabra.

It's been a pretty interesting week for Ridgewood's Lyons family thanks to a chance encounter with a creature whose identity created widespread confusion.

Family patriarch Rob Lyons last Tuesday snapped a photo of a curious creature loitering around a storm drain near the Ridgewood Duck Pond.

A few days later, Patch published the photo. Speculation over what the creature exploded. Is it a mangy fox? Could it be a coyote? A Maroon, perhaps? Could it be – dun, dun, duuuun – the blood-sucking chupacabra?!

OK, OK, what is it then?

Well, according to Pat Thomas, Curator of Mammals for the Bronx Zoo, it's definitely not a chupacabra.

"I think the animal in the image is probably a red fox with mange or some other ailment that caused it to lose its fur," he told Patch's Joseph M. Gerace. "I don't think it's a coyote because it looks too small relative to the sewer cover."

The possible species of the creature created quite a media stir last week.

On Friday, CBS2 showed up for the "juicy assignment" and interviewed the Lyons family as well as passerbys at the Duck Pond. Other media soon followed, including Telemundo.

"Telemundo knocked on my door this morning looking for an interview," Rob Lyons said on Tuesday. "I wasn't home but they talked to my kids... Apparently their viewers take the mention of Chupacabra very seriously."

Meanwhile, the Lyons family is looking to light candles on the front porch to ward off any bad juju, Rob joked.


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