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Short Stuff: Jackalope · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and this is short stuff,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: the shortest stuff of all about Jack Lopes. Do you
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: hear that siren? No? Do you hear now? No? Do
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: you hear it now? No? Now I do? Yeah. Do
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: you remember, Chuck? There was a period of time where
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: the fire department would layer down the street every time
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: we recorded. It was weird, like there was either somebody
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: who kept like faking a sprained ankle at the same
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: time on the same day every week, or they were
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: testing something out that we're not familiar with, but it
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: happened a lot. Yeah. That that was when we just
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: started podcasting, and they were like, go in that closet.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: And then it got to be a little bigger and
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: they were like, well, I guess you guys should at
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: least be in that dumb office. And then after a
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: little while longer, eventually they're like, Okay, I guess we'll
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: put up a studio. Yeah, they said, it's just like
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: that too. They're so upset, And now look at us.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Now we're like podcasting from home, speeding towards twenty years
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: in our basement, yeah, that's right. All right, So jackal opes. Uh,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: if you listen to our Taxidermy episode Taxidermy, no, no, no no,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: it was regular Taxidermy. Oh well, we've done one on
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: rogue Taxidermy too, haven't we. We covered that in Taxidermy.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know if we did a stand alone we
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: may have. All right, okay, go ahead, I'm sorry. But
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: either way it was in both, then this might be
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: take three. But if you've never seen a jackalope, just
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: pull your car over. If you're at home, just type
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: in jackalope. They're fairly familiar here in the United States
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: as sort of kitchy um art that you can hang
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: on your wall. Jackallyps are not real. It is a
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: combination a taxidermy combination of a rabbit or a hare
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: with antlers. And I grew up seeing them here and
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: there at roadside diners or if you travel out west
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: or something like maybe a hotel lobby wall, and and
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the whole thing with jacolypse is always that you try
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: to convince somebody that it's a real thing. Yeah, it's
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: very annoying, like that's a really annoying, unnecessary part of
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: the whole thing. But it's a Wyoming tradition. From what
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I understand, it's the snipe hunt of wall Art. That's
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: exactly right. Um. And there's lots of legends and tall
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: tales about the jaclopes that they have really nice singing voices,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: and that in particular, if you're out on the range
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: and you have a campfire going, you start singing cowboys
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: songs that from out in the out in the bush brush,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: they'll start singing in. They'll join in on the course
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: and everything, which is kind of adorable. They're also supposedly
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: cousins to big Foot. Um. They're pretty great and probably
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: the cutest mythical creatures there are. Um. But they actually,
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: as far as the New York Times I think reported
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: in nineteen, there's actually like a real life origin story
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: to them that we may or may not have discussed before,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: but we're definitely going to again here. That's right. The
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: origin story is I think very well vetted. Uh. This
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: is the kind of thing where it seems like it
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: could be because there's just so much, um, so many
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: tall tales surrounding jackalopes. That seems like the kind of
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: thing where the origin could be very highly suspect. But
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: it seems like, this is totally real. And the Herrick
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: brothers H E, R, R, I, C K and Wyoming,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: And we should mention Wyoming is very much into their
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: jackalopes because of this, because they were where it all started. Yeah,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: if you look at the Wyoming Lotteries logo, there's a
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: jackalope on. Yeah, it's a big deal in Wyoming. As
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: a matter of fact, there's at least five times. Uh,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: the Wyoming legislature has tried and failed for some reason.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: I don't get it to make the jackalope Wyoming's official
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: state mythological creature. Maybe they're trying to really govern and
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: do something that matters. I guess so. I suspect Liz
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Cheney is killing this every time. I don't know why,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: but I do. Uh. So the Herrick brothers, you know what,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: maybe we should take a break and leave a cliffhanger
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: as to what they actually did. Okay, it's short stuff.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Why not? Well, now we're on the road driving in
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Josh can Chuck. It's stuff you should know, all right,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: all right, it's quite a cliffhanger. I know about the
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  Speaker 1: Herrick brothers, H Douglas Herrick. He was born in Douglas,
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  Speaker 1: Wyoming in nine. He's in the Air Force during World
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: War Two and then worked as a pipe fitter and
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: was a big hunter because he is in Wyoming and
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of people that are into that there.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: And his brother Ralph, they got into taxidermy at an
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: early age and had their own taxidermy shop. And as
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: legend goes, one day, one of these brothers, and it
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: was the year is kind of um debatable, could be
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: thirty four, thirty nine or forty is what I've heard.
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  Speaker 1: One of them came back from a hunt, had this
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  Speaker 1: jack rabbit slid it across the table and it hits
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  Speaker 1: little dead head slid and perfectly met a pair of antlers,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: and one of them said they check that out, and
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: the other one said that's awesome, and that was it.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: That was it. They said, well, we're taxidermists, we might
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: as well make this happen, and they did. It's a
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: very sad origin story because of the dead rabbit, but
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: other than that, it's pretty cool. They made one. They
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: actually just made one, I guess from that rabbit and
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: those antlers and um, there was a guy named Roy Ball,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: who had a hotel in Douglas, Wyoming, who got wind
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  Speaker 1: of the brother's little invention, and he bought it off
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: of them for ten bucks back in again nineteen thirties
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  Speaker 1: at the latest, which is substantial um. And he put
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: it up in his hotel and it became uh basically
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: a little legendary piece of like you call it wall
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  Speaker 1: art uh. And it stayed there for a good three
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: maybe four decades, and then someone actually stole it off
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  Speaker 1: the wall and was it was never never found out
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  Speaker 1: who did it. It was never recovered. The original jackalope
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: maybe in somebody's garage or attic or even maybe on
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: their wall somewhere out there, and they may not even
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: know that this is the original jackalope that the Herrick
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: brothers created. So this is where I have to confess,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: because every time I was researching this, when we got
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: to this part, I kept thinking of the story. In college,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: I stole something with my friends and I in college
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: one time when we were out doing bad things and
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: a night out and Athens, we took a stuffed porcupine
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: from a bar that was hanging on the wall, and
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: that porcupine lived in our apartment for about six months
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  Speaker 1: before we returned it. Oh you did return it? Huh yeah,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: we read it well. When we moved out, we're like,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: what do we do with the porcupine? What bar was it?
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: I want to say it was Gus Garcias. Do you
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: remember that place? No? I remember it was that the
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: same thing as Guesses maybe, I think so. I've only
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: heard of it referred to as Gusses. Yeah, that's probably
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: one of those things where you knew the cool kid
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: name and I was older and more square, so I
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: called it by It's a given name. So so how
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: did you guys return it? We have to know. I
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: believe it was like, um, you know the fine upstanding
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: thing that you do when you go and throw it
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: at the front door and run with a note through
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  Speaker 1: one of the quills that said like, you know, we
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  Speaker 1: took this six months ago, sorry, signed anonymous. At least
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: you gave it back to Gus Garcia. Yeah. So somebody
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: stole that original jackalope and did not even have the
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: you know, the fourth rightness to throw it on the
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: front porch at that hotel. So it remains gone. Man,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: do you remember Uptown Lounge in their happy hour with
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: fish bowl Margharita's. I don't remember going to the happy
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: hour there. Oh it was insane. Athens is a lot
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: different now, Yeah, I know when you were there. Oh,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: I can't remember what we passed through there for about
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: three or four years ago. Okay, not too bad. I
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: still go occasionally, and um, yeah, it's a lot different
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: grown up, A lot can still porcupines willy nilly anymore. No,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: there's no college shenanigans. Everybody's like an activist and interested
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: in like important things, and we're like basically like animal
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: house or something. Pretty much. That was what we were
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: like in college. Uh So, Yeah, this original Jackalope was stolen,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: and like you said, they never caught the thief. But
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: this kind of kick started a thing for the Herrick
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: family and they started making and selling these things. I
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: don't I tried to find out if they held any
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: kind of weird patent or not, or if they were
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: knockoff jacko loobes. But they sold tens of thousands of these,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: which I really have to point out here. We're talking
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: about tons of thousands of dead rabbits and dead deer,
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  Speaker 1: some of which may never have been otherwise dead had
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: it not been for the jack Lope craze. Yes, I
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: think it had it's worth remarking. I don't want to
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: be a downer here because I know it's all sweet
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: and cute and hot like they like to to to
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: put the hurt and on tourists brains with, you know,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: talking about it's real or whatever. But a lot of
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: rabbits and and Dee or died because of this, this
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  Speaker 1: whole idea like it's real dead is what it is
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: exactly just for this rogue Taxadermy No, I agree. I
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: love those rabbits. I don't want to see him hanging
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: on a wall with antler sticking out of their heads. No,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: let the rabbits live. But Douglas, I think, uh wall
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: drug in Wyoming, which has a giant jackalope. There no
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: wal drugs in North Dakota. Oh it is okay. So
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: they became a distributor and they have a giant jackalope.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: So eventually, when Douglas Herrick, the initial jackal oper died
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: in two thousand three, I think his son was interviewed
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: by the New York Times and said that they were
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: selling it looks like, you know, fifteen to two thousand
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: of these a year just a wald drug. Yeah, yeah,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: it's a lot of rabbits. It is a lot of
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: I feel like we've really kind of taken this thing
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: on a nose dive, but um, I feel like we
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: could also take it on an even bigger nose dive
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: in a second, chuck, let's do it with the shop
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: Papioma virus. Uh. It's so sad to look at these pictures.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: It is sad, but it's also fascinating. It's much more
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: gratifying to look at um botanical or not botanical biological
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: um Yeah, botanies just plants, biological um or like nature
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: illustrations of it. Yeah, the um it's related to HPV
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: and it's an affliction that can cause rabbits to develop
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: these horns, their tumors basically, and they can come out
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: of their face looking like a little horns. So there
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: are pictures of rabbits with all these horny spikes thrusting
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: from their face and heads, and it's just look a
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: lot like war hogs. Yes, sort of like a rabbit
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: war hoog. And like, what's what's interesting to me? There's
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: actually one in the Smithsonians collection, their animal collection, dead
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: animal collection, I should say, um and that they that
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: doesn't seem to have informed the Herrick brothers creation of
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: the jackalope. Those are two different things, but there was
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: a period of time. I think the first sightings are
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: described in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. Yeah, the seventeenth
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: century um that that people wondered if there was a
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: species of rabbit out there that had horns or antlers.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: And it's just totally tangential to the invention of the jackalope,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with it, and even tangential not even
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: connected in any way. And that's jack galobes, that is
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: jack lops. If you want to know get to know jacklebs.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: You could do worse than traveling to Douglas, Wyoming, which
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: is the official, as proclaimed by Wyoming Governor Ed Herschler,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: home of the jacklope. That's where they hail from. And again,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: you could go play some scratch offs in Wyoming with
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: their lottery and see jackalope. Yeah, and you can even
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: buy a little fun fake jackalope hunting license. Yeah. I
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: thought that was kind of adorable, which is not real obviously.
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: I think they grant hunting from sunrise to sunset on
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: one day a year. Yeah, but it's a day that
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: doesn't even exist June thirty one, but it coincides with
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Douglas is Um Jackalope Days festival, which I think is
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: held in June as well. So if you're all about
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: the Jackalopes, yeah, killing rabbits, they do. And we also
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: have to give a shout out, which we probably did
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: in the Taxidermy episode two to our from Van Nostrin
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: who once had a band called the Jacklyps. Remember that's right,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: and also shout out to one of the nicest hotels
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: I've ever stayed in on our Australia tour on our
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: down days, the Jackalppe Hotel. Oh is that right? Yeah?
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: That was amazing. I could see Australians loving the jack Lope,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: but it's probably actually real in Australia. That's right. Um,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: I guess that's it. Chuck doesn't have anything more. I'm
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: assuming I don't either, so that means, of course, short
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: stuff is out. Stuff you Should Know is a production
• 13:31
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• 13:34
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• 13:37
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