Fascinated by stories like the one told by the three women whose shopping trip ended scarily, Santos has been collecting them for several years.Ī couple who for obvious reasons did not want to be named told the Crystal City writer this story: “A lot of people believe in lechuza,” says Zavala County historian and newspaper columnist Richard G.
Despite that, an internet search shows that the tradition is mostly oral. Since Spanish colonial times, generations of children in South Texas and across the river in Mexico have grown up hearing stories of lechuzas. But as far as these three women were concerned, the answer could be articulated in one word: lechuza. Sure, it could have been a loose battery wire, or any number of easy-explainable mechanical things. The bird, meanwhile, had disappeared.Īs mysteriously as it had died, the car eventually restarted. The women locked themselves in the car, stuck out in the middle of nowhere.
#LECHUZA FOTOS DRIVER#
The driver managed to get the car off the roadway but could not restart it. The lights went dark and the vehicle stalled, slowly losing speed. The bird seemed to be mocking the women, but this was no mockingbird.
The woman behind the wheel pressed her foot on the gas to outdistance the bird, which at one point circled back to fly right outside the driver’s window. The bird flew ahead of them faster than the vehicle, swinging back and forth and bobbing up and down. Just outside Batesville on State Highway 57, a large, dark and menacing bird suddenly appeared in the headlights of their car.
Among that group are three Zavala County women who vividly remember an experience they had one night on their way home from a shopping trip to San Antonio. And sometimes, an owl spreads its wide wings and flies from its roost looking for prey.īut some people along the border believe that owls are more than big-eyed night feeders. Some social media users condemned the incident as superstition gone wrong, leading to animal cruelty.“At night in South Texas, especially under a big moon, things start moving.ĭeer begin grazing, coarse-haired feral hogs emerge from the brush to steal corn from game feeders on the big ranches, five-foot rattlesnakes slide from their lair, the sensors on their arrowhead-shaped heads looking for warm meat. The villagers said the owl was really a lechuza and its screams as it was being burned were the witch screaming. In August 2014, a video of Mexican villagers interrogating and burning an owl alive went viral.
Giant birds have been reported in the area, and legends from Native American tribes north of Texas also incorporate giant birds (e.g., thunderbirds).įearers of the lechuza have taken action against actual owls. The exact origin of the lechuza legend is unknown, though it is possible that an actual giant owl was the inspiration for the story. Stories of the lechuza are thought to have been around since the Spanish colonized Mexico. Various methods are claimed to protect against the lechuza: tying seven knots in a rope and hanging it by the front door, throwing salt and chili powder into the bird’s face, shooting the bird, or reciting the Magnificat, a Christian prayer to the Virgin Mary. She lures her targets, often children or drunk people, out of houses by crying like a baby or by swooping down on cars late at night. Sometimes the owl is variously depicted as black or white and sometimes with the head of the old woman.Įxactly what the lechuza does to exact revenge varies widely across tellings of the story, though most reference the lechuza carrying away unsuspecting prey to her lair. As the story goes, an old woman shape-shifts into a giant owl, La Lechuza, to take revenge on people who wronged her during her life. Lechuza-a Spanish word for a type of owl, especially the barn owl-is a myth popular throughout northern Mexico and Texas.
0 kommentar(er)
