Short Stuff: Jackalope

we recorded. It was weird, like there was either somebody who kept like faking a sprained ankle at the same time on the same day every week, or they were testing something out that we're not familiar with, but it happened a lot. Yeah. That that was when we just started podcasting, and they were like, go in that closet. And then it got to be a little bigger and they were like, well, I guess you guys should at

least be in that dumb office. And then after a little while longer, eventually they're like, Okay, I guess we'll put up a studio. Yeah, they said, it's just like that too. They're so upset, And now look at us. Now we're like podcasting from home, speeding towards twenty years in our basement, yeah, that's right. All right, So jackal opes. Uh, if you listen to our Taxidermy episode Taxidermy, no, no, no no, it was regular Taxidermy. Oh well, we've done one on

rogue Taxidermy too, haven't we. We covered that in Taxidermy. I don't know if we did a stand alone we may have. All right, okay, go ahead, I'm sorry. But either way it was in both, then this might be take three. But if you've never seen a jackalope, just pull your car over. If you're at home, just type in jackalope. They're fairly familiar here in the United States as sort of kitchy um art that you can hang

on your wall. Jackallyps are not real. It is a combination a taxidermy combination of a rabbit or a hare with antlers. And I grew up seeing them here and there at roadside diners or if you travel out west or something like maybe a hotel lobby wall, and and the whole thing with jacolypse is always that you try to convince somebody that it's a real thing. Yeah, it's very annoying, like that's a really annoying, unnecessary part of the whole thing. But it's a Wyoming tradition. From what

I understand, it's the snipe hunt of wall Art. That's exactly right. Um. And there's lots of legends and tall tales about the jaclopes that they have really nice singing voices, and that in particular, if you're out on the range and you have a campfire going, you start singing cowboys songs that from out in the out in the bush brush, they'll start singing in. They'll join in on the course and everything, which is kind of adorable. They're also supposedly

cousins to big Foot. Um. They're pretty great and probably the cutest mythical creatures there are. Um. But they actually, as far as the New York Times I think reported in nineteen, there's actually like a real life origin story to them that we may or may not have discussed before, but we're definitely going to again here. That's right. The origin story is I think very well vetted. Uh. This is the kind of thing where it seems like it could be because there's just so much, um, so many

tall tales surrounding jackalopes. That seems like the kind of thing where the origin could be very highly suspect. But it seems like, this is totally real. And the Herrick brothers H E, R, R, I, C K and Wyoming, And we should mention Wyoming is very much into their jackalopes because of this, because they were where it all started. Yeah, if you look at the Wyoming Lotteries logo, there's a jackalope on. Yeah, it's a big deal in Wyoming. As

a matter of fact, there's at least five times. Uh, the Wyoming legislature has tried and failed for some reason. I don't get it to make the jackalope Wyoming's official state mythological creature. Maybe they're trying to really govern and do something that matters. I guess so. I suspect Liz Cheney is killing this every time. I don't know why, but I do. Uh. So the Herrick brothers, you know what, maybe we should take a break and leave a cliffhanger

as to what they actually did. Okay, it's short stuff. Why not? Well, now we're on the road driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh can Chuck. It's stuff you should know, all right, all right, it's quite a cliffhanger. I know about the Herrick brothers, H Douglas Herrick. He was born in Douglas,

Wyoming in nine. He's in the Air Force during World War Two and then worked as a pipe fitter and was a big hunter because he is in Wyoming and there's there's a lot of people that are into that there. And his brother Ralph, they got into taxidermy at an early age and had their own taxidermy shop. And as legend goes, one day, one of these brothers, and it was the year is kind of um debatable, could be thirty four, thirty nine or forty is what I've heard.

One of them came back from a hunt, had this jack rabbit slid it across the table and it hits little dead head slid and perfectly met a pair of antlers, and one of them said they check that out, and the other one said that's awesome, and that was it. That was it. They said, well, we're taxidermists, we might as well make this happen, and they did. It's a very sad origin story because of the dead rabbit, but

other than that, it's pretty cool. They made one. They actually just made one, I guess from that rabbit and those antlers and um, there was a guy named Roy Ball, who had a hotel in Douglas, Wyoming, who got wind of the brother's little invention, and he bought it off of them for ten bucks back in again nineteen thirties at the latest, which is substantial um. And he put it up in his hotel and it became uh basically a little legendary piece of like you call it wall

art uh. And it stayed there for a good three maybe four decades, and then someone actually stole it off the wall and was it was never never found out who did it. It was never recovered. The original jackalope maybe in somebody's garage or attic or even maybe on their wall somewhere out there, and they may not even know that this is the original jackalope that the Herrick brothers created. So this is where I have to confess, because every time I was researching this, when we got

to this part, I kept thinking of the story. In college, I stole something with my friends and I in college one time when we were out doing bad things and a night out and Athens, we took a stuffed porcupine from a bar that was hanging on the wall, and that porcupine lived in our apartment for about six months before we returned it. Oh you did return it? Huh yeah, we read it well. When we moved out, we're like, what do we do with the porcupine? What bar was it?

I want to say it was Gus Garcias. Do you remember that place? No? I remember it was that the same thing as Guesses maybe, I think so. I've only heard of it referred to as Gusses. Yeah, that's probably one of those things where you knew the cool kid name and I was older and more square, so I called it by It's a given name. So so how

did you guys return it? We have to know. I believe it was like, um, you know the fine upstanding thing that you do when you go and throw it at the front door and run with a note through one of the quills that said like, you know, we took this six months ago, sorry, signed anonymous. At least you gave it back to Gus Garcia. Yeah. So somebody stole that original jackalope and did not even have the you know, the fourth rightness to throw it on the

front porch at that hotel. So it remains gone. Man, do you remember Uptown Lounge in their happy hour with fish bowl Margharita's. I don't remember going to the happy hour there. Oh it was insane. Athens is a lot different now, Yeah, I know when you were there. Oh, I can't remember what we passed through there for about three or four years ago. Okay, not too bad. I still go occasionally, and um, yeah, it's a lot different grown up, A lot can still porcupines willy nilly anymore. No,

there's no college shenanigans. Everybody's like an activist and interested in like important things, and we're like basically like animal house or something. Pretty much. That was what we were like in college. Uh So, Yeah, this original Jackalope was stolen, and like you said, they never caught the thief. But this kind of kick started a thing for the Herrick

family and they started making and selling these things. I don't I tried to find out if they held any kind of weird patent or not, or if they were knockoff jacko loobes. But they sold tens of thousands of these, which I really have to point out here. We're talking about tons of thousands of dead rabbits and dead deer, some of which may never have been otherwise dead had it not been for the jack Lope craze. Yes, I

think it had it's worth remarking. I don't want to be a downer here because I know it's all sweet and cute and hot like they like to to to put the hurt and on tourists brains with, you know, talking about it's real or whatever. But a lot of rabbits and and Dee or died because of this, this whole idea like it's real dead is what it is exactly just for this rogue Taxadermy No, I agree. I love those rabbits. I don't want to see him hanging on a wall with antler sticking out of their heads. No,

let the rabbits live. But Douglas, I think, uh wall drug in Wyoming, which has a giant jackalope. There no wal drugs in North Dakota. Oh it is okay. So they became a distributor and they have a giant jackalope. So eventually, when Douglas Herrick, the initial jackal oper died in two thousand three, I think his son was interviewed by the New York Times and said that they were selling it looks like, you know, fifteen to two thousand of these a year just a wald drug. Yeah, yeah,

it's a lot of rabbits. It is a lot of I feel like we've really kind of taken this thing on a nose dive, but um, I feel like we could also take it on an even bigger nose dive in a second, chuck, let's do it with the shop Papioma virus. Uh. It's so sad to look at these pictures. It is sad, but it's also fascinating. It's much more gratifying to look at um botanical or not botanical biological um Yeah, botanies just plants, biological um or like nature

illustrations of it. Yeah, the um it's related to HPV and it's an affliction that can cause rabbits to develop these horns, their tumors basically, and they can come out of their face looking like a little horns. So there are pictures of rabbits with all these horny spikes thrusting from their face and heads, and it's just look a lot like war hogs. Yes, sort of like a rabbit

war hoog. And like, what's what's interesting to me? There's actually one in the Smithsonians collection, their animal collection, dead animal collection, I should say, um and that they that doesn't seem to have informed the Herrick brothers creation of the jackalope. Those are two different things, but there was a period of time. I think the first sightings are

described in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. Yeah, the seventeenth century um that that people wondered if there was a species of rabbit out there that had horns or antlers. And it's just totally tangential to the invention of the jackalope, nothing to do with it, and even tangential not even connected in any way. And that's jack galobes, that is jack lops. If you want to know get to know jacklebs.

You could do worse than traveling to Douglas, Wyoming, which is the official, as proclaimed by Wyoming Governor Ed Herschler, home of the jacklope. That's where they hail from. And again, you could go play some scratch offs in Wyoming with their lottery and see jackalope. Yeah, and you can even buy a little fun fake jackalope hunting license. Yeah. I thought that was kind of adorable, which is not real obviously. I think they grant hunting from sunrise to sunset on

one day a year. Yeah, but it's a day that doesn't even exist June thirty one, but it coincides with Douglas is Um Jackalope Days festival, which I think is held in June as well. So if you're all about the Jackalopes, yeah, killing rabbits, they do. And we also have to give a shout out, which we probably did in the Taxidermy episode two to our from Van Nostrin

who once had a band called the Jacklyps. Remember that's right, and also shout out to one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed in on our Australia tour on our down days, the Jackalppe Hotel. Oh is that right? Yeah? That was amazing. I could see Australians loving the jack Lope, but it's probably actually real in Australia. That's right. Um, I guess that's it. Chuck doesn't have anything more. I'm assuming I don't either, so that means, of course, short

stuff is out. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.