THE LEGENDARY JACKALOPE SYMBOL OF THE MODERN AMERICAN WEST
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p front I need to get something out of the way: bison are buffalo and vultures are buzzards and I refuse to change that. Frogs and toads are not the same animal, nor crows and ravens the same bird. On the other hand, jackalope is wrong on two accounts; first, that those cute little head mounts that were once a common sight in bars, bedrooms,
motel lobbies, and the like almost never have antelope horns; second, the word police say that the American antelope is properly called a pronghorn— I see the two names together quite often—and the jackrabbit is actually a hare. Now that’s out of the way, who wants to call them harealopes or jackadeer? Doesn’t have the same kick, does it? Stagbunny is another entry in literature. So jackalope it is. Horned rabbits have been around for a very long time. The ancient Persians had one, a Medieval book on animals actually pictures one. But where did the first one in the West come from, and when? It is generally accepted that a Wyoming taxidermist named Herrick put a dead rabbit next to some antlers and the first jackalope sprang to life. This was in the early thirties. It went up in a local hotel, and the little bugger was an instant success. Herrick kept on making them, and when the public kept on buying, them other taxidermists took up the cause. I bought mine in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, years ago, but the moths eventually ate it. THESE TWO HEAD MOUNTS SHOW I would have chosen Texas as the WONDERFUL IMAGINATION ON birthplace because they have really huge THE PART OF THE TAXIDERMIST, jackrabbits, and rather puny deer—especially WHO TOOK A MORE INTERESTING in the headgear department. To make a really APPROACH TO HIS WORK. effective jackalope, the rabbit has to be really big and the antlers (not horns, antelope have those) must seem in proportion. So, we know what a jackalope is (or ought to be), but what does it do, where did the mythological beast come from, what sound does it make, and how fast can it run? All very good questions. Discounting the taxidermy theory, the original one was DEER ARE SOMETIMES FOUND WITH LOCKED HORNS said to be a cross FROM FIGHTING. 28 October 2018
between a small female antelope and a large jackrabbit. But like the mule, offspring would be sterile. A slightly better origin story has the big bunny having his way with a now extinct miniature deer. Still this has the mule problem. It is said to be very aggressive, and even dangerous if picked up with bare hands. Besides the antlers, it has big teeth and claws. It can run 90 miles an hour (antelopes can do 60 or more), jackalope milk is good for whatever ails a body, it can be lured close with whiskey—it has a taste for hard liquor. They can imitate the human voice, and old cowboys singing around a campfire would hear one now and again, singing along in a sweet tenor. That raises the question of how many men on a trail drive sang around the campfire rather than getting some sleep? Is the jackalope a folk symbol of the Old West? Well, folklore has no known author, is repeated in variant versions by common folk, and is passed on from one generation to the next. If the horned rabbit was created in the early thirties by a known taxidermist, there is no folklore, unless the traders and shop owners, who sell them and are the only source for the stories, are somehow identified as “folk.” It seems more logical that they are a symbol of the New West, rather than the older version. It is also true that they were never meant to be believable, but a joking nod to the outrageous exaggeration we have given to the Western United States. Years ago, Jack Schaefer (author of Shane and movies like Monte Walsh) told me he offered a thousand dollars (maybe two or more) to anyone who could show proof that there had ever been a historical “walk-down” gunfight. You know, a duel, two guys in the middle of the street walking toward each other with murder in their eyes. Nobody ever claimed the prize. As a matter of fact, the duel, a staple of Western movies, never happened in the Old West. But what would High Noon be without one? I have long been interested in this sort of mythmaking. Both George Armstrong Custer and Billy the Kid were being pushed toward fame in their own time. Both these famous characters had their legends pretty
