Cryptids are, by definition, creatures that dwell beyond the threshold of conventional science. People who hunt them and profess to study them live in hope that their chosen quarry will somehow, someday, produce incontrovertible evidence of its existence. Cryptozoology, by its nature, relies on the power of faith.
Many cryptids seem to resolve into misidentifications of known species. Some appear to be memories of extinct animals. Others may turn out to be known animals living far outside of their usual range. Once in a great while, one may actually be found, with great and appropriate fanfare.
And then there are the creatures of folklore. Tall tales. Whoppers and leg-pullers designed to catch the gullible and raise a good laugh at the local watering hole.
Humans do love their stories. They also love to pull pranks. Hoaxes are an ancient art and craft. P.T. Barnum exhibited the Feejee Mermaid as “proof” that the mythical sea creature actually exists. (It was the top half of a monkey sewn onto the bottom half of a fish.)
Maybe that was part of the inspiration for the notorious and persistent tale of the jackalope. This North American classic purports to be a cross between a pygmy deer and a jackrabbit. It’s quite straightforward: a jackrabbit with antlers.
Images of it show up all over the continent, particularly in the mountain West. According to the lore, it’s vanishingly rare; it only mates during electrical storms. It has superpowers: for example, it can catch bullets in its teeth. And it can sing. Just ask a cowboy who has harmonized with it around a campfire.
It’s a joyous hoax, a myth with a wink. Apparently it originated in Douglas, Wyoming in 1934, when taxidermist Ralph Herrick and his brother Doug attached a set of deer antlers to the preserved carcass of a jackrabbit.
What started as a couple of guys having some fun on the job turned into a huge thing. The brothers founded a cottage industry, turning out whole lines of taxidermied jackalopes. The town of Douglas embraced it; it became their signature attraction. To this day, they’re issuing jackalope hunting licenses by the thousands, and jackalope postcards are a staple of roadside rest stops all across the West. Eventually, the whole of Wyoming embraced it, and it’s become a symbol of the state.
That’s not all there is to the story. It turns out the jackalope is not entirely, or exactly, mythical. There is a disease that afflicts rabbits, that causes hard, hornlike growths on their heads. It’s called the Shope papilloma virus, and it’s a real thing. There’s even a specimen in the Smithsonian.
The same can’t be said of one of my favorite cryptic cryptids, the mighty Squonk. This is the diametrical opposite of the Jackalope for looks and personality. It’s an older tale, concocted, it’s said, in the nineteenth century and recorded in a Very Serious Tome published in 1910, William T. Cox’s Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts—because what’s a Very Serious Tome without a Rather Long and Compendious Title?
The Squonk, according to Mr. Cox, was once widely dispersed throughout the continent, but its range has shrunk to the hemlock forests of northern Pennsylvania, in and around the Poconos. It’s fearfully ugly, piglike in shape and size, with a loose, wrinkled, warty skin. It spends its life in hiding, weeping over its own ugliness.
Hunters, we’re told, have managed to capture it, but once confined, it melts into a puddle of tears. Which is one way to explain why there’s no physical evidence. Stuff it into a bag and all you’re left with is a damp spot and a sense of the futility of it all.
That’s magnificent in its lugubrious way. Who wouldn’t love a creature so perfect for what it is, with such a wonderfully evocative name? Squonk. Say it with me. Squonk.
I’ll close this gallery with one last wonder of the world. It’s a mouse. A mouse that howls like a wolf. That hunts scorpions, and smites off their tails, and laughs at their venom. It howls as it hunts them and sings as it kills them, and it eats them for breakfast.
I’m not making this one up. It’s called the grasshopper mouse. It lives in the deserts of southwestern North America. It’s an honest for real carnivorous mouse that howls at the moon, and it really is resistant to the venom of the Arizona bark scorpion, which can kill a human.
Watch the video. It’s wild. You might even say legendary.
No wonder cryptozoologists keep their hopes alive, with creatures like the grasshopper mouse to show us how truly amazing this planet can be.
The jackalope is just a copy of the southern German Wolpertinger.
Look up the rhinograde snouter for a few laughs.
Try to lay your hands on the book these days. Second-hand copies cost a fortune. I should never have let my ex get away with mine.
Definitely will do. I was hoping to get some recs for other favorite legpullers.
I’ve always been a fan of the Sidehill Gouger myself.
Every steak house in Utah has a jackelope on the wall among the deer and elk.
Most of the trourist traps…err…trading posts/souvenir shops, in the foothills of the Rockies sell jackalope carcasses. Genuine, I tell you! /s
I’ve seen pictures of Jackalope heads lined up along shelves, ready for the tourist trade.
We live in the desert near Southwest Phoenix. I wish the animals that live near us were cryptids. There are scorpions, gila monsters, tarantulas, javalinas, and tarantula hawk wasps. (Look that one up. It’s a real doozy.)
Waving from SE of Tucson. I have a gila monster living under my house, and tarantula hawk wasps on the property, along with tarantulas and scorpions and the rest of the desert cast of characters (roadrunners, plural! coyotes! quail parades! badass lizards!)
When are we going Snipe hunting? Soon?
A snipe is a real bird; a “sniper” originally meant someone who could reliably hit one, which is a difficult feat of marksmanship. A “snipe hunt” originally meant “something almost everyone will fail at” not “a wild goose chase”.
You wait here and hold the bag open, and we’ll all go off into the woods and drive the snipe into it.
I have to shout out the fantastic short story Jackalope Wives by T. Kingfisher!
https://apex-magazine.com/short-fiction/jackalope-wives/
I’m fond of drop bears, which seem to be the Australian version of the jackalope, “a myth with a wink.” Some co-workers and I visited our company’s Sydney office last year. In our jet-lagged state, we were getting to know our colleagues, and the topic of dangerous Australian animals inevitably came up. So I chipped in, “And, of course, the drop bears.” One of the other Americans asked, “Wait, what’s a drop bear?” I invited the Australians to explain, but they said that since I’d brought it up, I should enlighten my colleague. So I got to do the whole routine while my co-worker grew more alarmed by the word. That’s one of my proudest moments from that trip.
I remember watch home videos of the Jackalope on TV when I was a kid. Was that Funniest Home Videos?
I will never look at mice the same way again.
I did not know that the title creature of the Genesis song “Squonk” has American origins!
I still say Hester in the Golden Compass books should have been a jackalope.
This reminded me of a postcard I have from the Northern Territory of Australia featuring “The incredible Northern Territory “Buffaroo””.
On the back it says “This is the rarest animal in the N.T. A cross between the big Red Kangaroo and the Water Buffalo. It is extremely shy and aggressive. None have ever been captured and this is the only known photograph.”
The only buffalo features are an impressive set of horns behind the ears.
Bundaberg is a town in Queensland Australia. The symbol for Bundaberg Rum is of course a polar bear. If you google “Bundaberg Rum drop bear ad” you may find a youtube video about drop bears.