Please, get our goat:The bug-eyed, three-foot-tall beast...

Please, get our goat:

The bug-eyed, three-foot-tall beast is said to have the fangs--not to mention, the dining needs--of a vampire, and it feeds on animals. Introducing chupacabra (“goatsucker”).

Sightings have ranged from Mexico, where one newspaper’s headline screamed, “Goatsucker Fever Sweeps the Nation,” to East Los Angeles, where some TV reporters have interviewed alleged witnesses. The local sightings, by coincidence, came right around sweeps week, when TV ratings are calculated.

Anyway, with the authorities ignoring the threat, good Samaritan Robert W. Morgan of KRTH-FM tried to trap a chupacabra himself. The radio personality stationed a goat supplied by listener Mario Marckord outside the studio Friday at 5 a.m., with a net set up nearby.

But the beast didn’t show. Crafty, crafty chupacabra.

How did the goat feel about all this?

Pet psychic Stacey Anne Wolf huddled with the animal beforehand, and, according to KRTH spokesman Wayne Lewis, said that “the goat felt secure but has no short-term memory so can’t remember why he’s there.”

SOMETHING TO CHEW ON: We asked Lewis where Marckord got the goat. “He told us that when he moved into a house in Van Nuys, the goat was already there,” Lewis said. “The landlord said the previous resident left it there. The landlord said he’d be glad to take it because he wanted to kill it and cook it. But Mario said he would keep the goat as a pet.”

AUTOMATION THREATENS ANOTHER INDUSTRY: Even flag-waving workers such as Juan Mendoza, shown at a Burbank car wash, are facing technological competition. The Beverly Catalina Car Wash, for instance, has a mechanical flagger. The latter looks predictably smug to us.

LAST WORDS: Talk jock Tom Leykis’ last program on KMPC-AM was cut short recently after protests about the station’s cancellation of his show. Listeners offered such comments on the air as: “A liberal voice [was] cut off by a conservative station.” KMPC promptly switched to a tamer rerun.

Radio swan songs can be memorable, in different ways.

When word leaked out that KMAX-FM was dropping its sports format earlier this year, two late-night hosts who called themselves the “Sports Gods” went out spewing vulgarities.

A few years ago, Joe Crummey and Phil Henry were alternately hosting a nightly talk show on KFI-AM radio when Henry learned that the station had decided to give Crummey the job full time. Henry chose as the topic for his last show, “kissing up” to the boss, though he used a more anatomically precise phrase.

Disc jockey Pat “Paraquat” Kelly was a bit more subtle when KMET-FM dumped him and the rest of its staff in 1987. Just before exiting, he dedicated the song “Beautiful Loser” to the station.

One fired talk-show duo at KMPC was allowed to go on the air for their final hour last January, no doubt because the station figured the situation would be handled maturely. And there were no outbursts by the two, Leslie Pam and Ann Christie, who are psychologists.

miscelLAny:

A radio reporter said Friday that there was disagreement over whether a federal report on Whitewater vindicates President and Mrs. “Nixon.” We’ll wait for the Whitewater tapes.