El Chupacabra
(From “chupar”–to suck,  “cabra”–a female goat)

The Chupacabra–dread goatsucker, floats in the clouds. He is waiting for the sweet girl goat who trips home over the bowed bridge behind the Three Billie Goats Gruff.

One gruff Billie “Baaaaaaahs about heartburn. One more gruff Billie “Billllllleeeeees on about taxes. And the last gruff Billie “Maaaaaaahs about greener grass on the other side of the river––which may be reached, of course, only by crossing the bowed bridge.

From our removed vantage point, we can see, crouching under this bridge,
the Troll. He is poised to catch #1 Billie, then #2 Billie, then #3 Billie, and
as fast as he catches them, he gobbles them up.

Now, he is about to grab sweet Baby Girl Goat when––out of the clouds swoops the Chupacabra! His horns are sharp, his face is green. With whiskers for eyebrows, long hose mouth with suckers, thorns extruding from the suckers, eyes the color of a poinsettia flower flashing purple fire, mouth dripping saliva, claws flashing, opening, lowering to grab up Sweet Missy Goat Girl.

“Noooo,” we scream.  “Run!” we beg. “Look up!” We groan. But sweet silly Goatgirl only pumps her tail goat-fashion and lifts one hoof to raise it up to bridge level.  She shivers flies off her tender flanks, tossing her silken goat tresses as she does, bats her baby browns and trips onto the bridge, wondering, “Where is Uncle Billie?” And then, “Where is other Uncle Billie?” And then, “Where is Uncle Billie 3?”

As she reaches the bridge apex, she peers over and sees her own shadow only. She does not see the Troll’s long arm reaching up behind her. She does not see the shadow of the Chupacabra spreading larger over the bride around her. She turns her head sideways, wondering where her grumbling Billies have gone off to, and in the water sees another pretty goat girl leaning toward her. She leans forward toward the water girl, leans farther, until one well-turned goat hoof only supports her weight upon the bridge. Then, just as the Troll’s hand tries to close upon her arm, she tumbles over into deep cool water, and the Chupacabra, reaching out his long neck to drink her, sinks his suckers instead into the Troll.

The Troll, reaching in vain for the retreating Goodie Goat shape, feels the sweet piercing hot flowing of his black Troll blood into the Chupacabra.  Then the Chupacabra, tasting the blood, stops. Sputters. Withdraws his stickers. Distends his hose mouth. Spits. Spits bitter Troll blood. Reaches down to drink the river. Then spits out, drinks again, spits out again, draining the river until, his attempts to escape the results of his own actions executed too late, the Troll blood poison pulls him down to perish on the bridge, one claw touching the shoulder of the fast-fading Troll, one arm draping over a furry Troll paunch.

And they die in a monster embrace while down below, our sodden Goat Deb rolls over in the streambed emptied by the suckers of the Chupacabra, shakes mud from her curly coat, wipes hooves on the riverbank grass, trips daintily over pebbles to the other streamside, and gallops down the path.

And, the moral of the story? According to one troll scholar, it is:
–Don’t let some old Troll get your goat

Whereas Chupacabra experts say the moral to the story is:
–Once a goatsucker, next a moatsucker.

But I, after all, am the teller of this story, and I say the true moral to the story is:
–Be you a Billie Goat Gruff or a Chupacabra, never ask for whom the bridge trolls. It trolls               for thee!

For RDP Tuesday