Jackalopes in Popular Culture

Tall tales

The jackalope is subject to many outlandish and largely tongue-in-cheek claims embedded in tall tales about its habits. Jackalopes are said to be so dangerous that hunters are advised to wear stovepipes on their legs to keep from being gored.[1] Stores in Douglas sell jackalope milk, but The New York Times questions its authenticity on grounds that milking a jackalope is known to be fraught with risk.[14] One of the ways to catch a jackalope is to entice it with whiskey, the jackalope’s beverage of choice.[21]

The jackalope can imitate the human voice, according to legend. During the days of the Old West, when cowboys gathered by the campfires singing at night, jackalopes could be heard mimicking their voices[5] or singing along, usually as a tenor.[14] It is said that jackalopes, the rare Lepus antilocapra, only breed during lightning flashes and that their antlers make the act difficult despite the hare’s reputation for fertility.[22]

In popular culture

Jackalope statue outside of Wall Drug in South Dakota

Since Herrick and his brother began selling manipulated taxidermy heads in the 1930s, such trophies—as well as jackalope postcards and related gift-shop items—can be found in many places beyond Douglas.[29] The student magazine of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design in New Mexico is called The Jackalope.[30] On the other side of the world, The Hop Factory craft beer cafe in Newcastle, Australia, uses a leaping jackalope as its logo.[31] In 1986, James Abdnor, a senator from South Dakota, gave U.S. President Ronald Reagan a stuffed jackalope (rabbit head with antlers) during a presidential campaign stop in Rapid City.[32]

Many books, including a large number written for children, feature the jackalope. A search for “jackalope” in the WorldCat listings of early 2015 produced 225 hits, including 57 for books.[33] Among them is Juan and the Jackalope: A Children’s Book in Verse by Rudolfo Anaya. The WorldCat summary of Anaya’s book says: “Competing for the hand of the lovely Rosita and her rhubarb pie, Juan rides a Jackalope in a race against Pecos Bill.”[34] A short story, “Jackalope Wives” by Ursula Vernon, has been nominated for a 2014 Nebula Award.[35]

Musicians have used the jackalope in various ways. R. Carlos Nakai, a Native American flute player, formerly belonged to a group called Jackalope. In the late 1980s, it performed what Nakai called “synthacousticpunkarachiNavajazz”, which combined “improvisation, visual art, storytelling, dance and dramatic theatrical effects.”[36] Nakai said he wanted people to dream as they listened to the music.[36] Jakalope is a Canadian alternative pop/rock group formed in 2003 by Dave “Rave” Ogilvie.[37][38] The band Miike Snow uses the jackalope as its logo. Band member Andrew Wyatt said during an interview in 2012 that the logo was meant to signify experiment and adventure.[39] Of the 225 Worldcat hits resulting from a search for “jackalope”, 95 were related to music.[33]

Jackalopes have appeared in movies and on television. A jackalope named “Jack Ching Bada Bing” was a recurring character in a series of sketches on the television showAmerica’s Funniest People. The show’s host, Dave Coulier, voiced the rascally hybrid.[40] In 2003,[41] Pixar featured a jackalope in the short animation Boundin’. The jackalope gave helpful advice to a lamb who was feeling sad after being shorn.[42]

Jackalopes have appeared in video games. In Red Dead Redemption, the player is able to hunt and skin jackalopes.[43] In Redneck Rampage, jackalopes, including one the size of a bus, are enemies.[44] Jackalopes are part of the action in Guild Wars 2.[45]

A low-budget jackalope mockumentary, Stagbunny, aired in Casper and Douglas in 2006. The movie included interviews with the owner of a Douglas sporting goods store who claimed to harbor a live jackalope on his premises and with a paleontologist who explained the natural history of the jackalope and its place in the fossil record.[1]

Beginning in 1997, the Central Hockey League included a team called the Odessa Jackalopes.[46] The team joined the South Division of the North American Hockey Leaguebefore the 2011–12 season.[46][47] An Odessa sports writer expressed concern about the team’s name, which he found insufficiently intimidating and which sounded like “something you might eat for breakfast.”[48]

Jackalope Brewing Company, the first commercial brewery in Tennessee run by women, opened in Nashville in 2011.[49] Its four craft beers are Thunder Ann, Rompo, Bearwalker, and Leghorn.[50]

Scholarly interpretations

Folklorist John A. Gutowski sees in the Douglas jackalope an example of an American tall tale publicized by a local community that seeks wider recognition. Through a combination of hoax and media activity, the town or other community draws attention to itself for social or economic reasons. A common adjunct to this activity involves the creation of an annual festival to perpetuate the town’s association with the local legend.[51]

Gutowski finds evidence of what he calls the “protofestival” pattern throughout the United States. In addition to the jackalope, his examples include the sea serpent of Nantucket, which in 1937 led to “stories of armadas hunting the monster, and footprint discoveries by local businessmen”, accompanied by wide publicity. In similar fashion, Newport, Arkansas, publicized its White River Monster, and Algiers, Louisiana, claimed to be home to a flying Devil Man. Ware, Massachusetts, drew media attention to its local reputation for alligator sightings. Perry, New York, held Silver Lake Sea Serpent Festivals based on a local hoax. The Hodag Festival in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, celebrates “discovery” of a prehistoric creature in a nearby pit. Willow Creek, California, hosts an annual Bigfoot Festival. Since 1950, Churubusco, Indiana, has celebrated Turtle Days, based on a story, part real and part invented, about the hunt for the Beast of Busco, a 500-pound (230 kg) snapping turtle said to be living in a nearby lake.[51]

Common to these tales, Gutowski says, is the recurring motif of the quest for the mythical animal, often a monster. The same motif, he notes, appears in American novels such as Moby Dick and Old Man and the Sea and in monster movies such as King Kong and Jaws and in world literature such as Beowulf. The monster motif also appears in tales of contemporary places outside the United States, such as Scotland, with its Loch Ness Monster. What is not global, Gutowski says, is the embrace of local monster tales by American communities that put them to use through “public relations hoaxes, boisterous boosterism, and [a] carnival atmosphere… “.[51]

Folklorist Richard M. Dorson also cites the “booster impulse, mingled with entrepreneurial hoaxing” as the way that Douglas with its jackalope, Churubusco with its giant turtle, and other towns with their own local legends rise above anonymity. He traces the impulse and the methods to the promotional literature of colonial times that depicted North America as an earthly paradise. Much later, in the 19th century, settlers transferred that optimistic vision to the American West, where it culminated in “boosterism”. Although other capitalist countries advertise their products, Dorson says, “…the intensity of the American ethos in advertising, huckstering, attention-getting, media-manipulating to sell a product, a personality, a town is beyond compare.”[52]