There seems to be two social phenomena going on with these stories: First, the "Mysterious" headline-grabbing angle. The creatures seem bizarre to most people who have no idea about the diversity that exists in nature that isn't typically right under our feet. Or, in the case of normal animals on Ring or trail cams, we fail to recognize visual glitches that make the object appear unusual. It's a spectacle and so it's entertaining.
But the second phenomenon is related to social media - the inevitable parade of commenters who respond to the story. Although they are entirely unqualified, they do not hesitate to make guesses on the identity, some of which are ridiculous. These situations, like most online commenting, give people who like to engage an opportunity to chime in with no downsides. Unfortunately, lazy reporters regularly skim the comments for the most outrageous or the most plausible-sounding explanation to print instead of asking people who actually might know. How many times have you seen Tweets or comments quoted in "news" articles? A lot. That's not credible information but it gets widely circulated.
Social media has allowed opinions to be "news". And the need for continual, interesting news content means that someone's interesting, but not actually newsworthy, observations get presented in the guise of "news" particularly if it has an associated visual to go with it.
Maybe a third thing: I see appearing more often is the local wildlife officials admitting to not knowing what it is and creating a false mystery. Either they didn't make a reasonable examination of the options, they are very poorly trained, or they deliberately want to create attention for themselves (such as the Amarillo zoo creature from last year).
