By Molly Moore

Mexico City

First came the reports of goats, then lambs and roosters, massacred in the night and drained of their blood. The only evidence of their attackers: large fang marks on the animal's necks.

Within days, a farm worker in the western state of Jalisco appeared at a village clinic with bite wounds. His assailant: a beast standing three feet tall with a huge snout and dark, velvety skin.

It has the fangs of a vampire, the wings of a bat and the personality of an extraterrestrial. And now there are sightings everywhere, all across Mexico -- in dusty farm villages in the northern desert, in the gulf port of Veracruz, even on the ranch of Guanajuato state Governor Vicente Fox.

"Goat-Sucker Fever Sweeps the Nation," declared the front page of the Mexico City Times on Thursday, along with an artist's conception of the bug-eyed, winged, demon-like animal that is spreading hysteria -- along with skepticism -- across the land.

There are accounts of close encounters with the "chupacabras," or goat sucker, which began with reports of farm animal slaughters. They have spread to fantastic tales of human confrontations.

No one, of course, has bagged -- or even photographed -- the goat sucker. However, the government became so concerned about stopping the mania that the state of Sinaloa ordered a zoological task force into the field to find the mystery animal.

On Wednesday, the government task force issued its report: There is no goat sucker, but pollution is now so bad that it is driving ordinary animals mad, giving them the behavioral trappings of crazed alien creatures.

"We have ruled out the theory that the attack on sheep and goats was carried out by a supernatural being or a blood-sucking bat," said Javier Delgadillo, a scientist on the task force. "One explanation for these attacks could be that animals -- bats, pumas, dogs, etc. -- have been driven mad by the devastating effects of poisonous gases and toxic wastes on nature. Perhaps what is happening now with the goat sucker is nature's way of making us pay for the constant damage we have inflicted on the environment."

Ernesto Enkerlin, a wildlife biologist at the Technological Institute of Monterrey, offered a more plausible theory: "This is a sign of collective psychosis," he told one newspaper. "I don't know if it's the (economic) crisis or what, but this is an exaggerated amount of noise about a fairly common occurrence."

The fairly common occurrence, that is, of wild dogs or wolves preying on farm animals. In fact, veterinarians who examined some of the dead animals said that the body tissues around the fang marks were devoid of blood, a common occurrence in bite cases, while plenty of blood remained in other parts of the corpses.

Those examinations, however, have done nothing to squelch the explosion of new reports.

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