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There was a Jackalope on my block when I was a boy.

But first, some background:

The word “Jackalope” – referring to an antlered rabbit – was coined by the American pioneers; it was a creature of their tall tales. Though on a basic level, according to these tales, the Jackalope was simply a species of rabbit that sported deerlike antlers, its attributes would be…embellished from story to story. Sometimes it was said that male Jackalopes would become incorrigible during rutting season, attacking anything whatsoever in order to impress the females; bison, taking pity on the rabbits, would step out of their way when thus attacked. Sometimes it was said that Jackalopes loved alcohol, and would raid human camps for it. They couldn’t live in holes like other rabbits, due to their antlers; they had no fear of predators for the same reason. And so on. Some storytellers went so far as to ascribe anthropophagy (man-eating) to the species, though one imagines that the Jackalopes would have a bit of difficulty taking their prey. The pioneers, it seems, had what you might call “fertile imaginations.”

Unlike many of the other creatures of the tall tales, however, the origins of the Jackalope are rooted in reality. Stated simply, there is a rabbit disease called papillomatosis that causes its victims to grow long tumors between the ears. More specifically and gruesomely, papillomatosis is caused by the Shope papillomavirus (papillomaviruses being the sort of viruses that cause warts in humans), which is transmitted by biting insects, especially the Rabbit Tick (Haemaphysalis leporis-palustris). Biting insects tend to bite rabbits between the ears; hence the placement of the tumors. A rather grim and prosaic explanation, and one with which I was familiar, as a child, by virtue of a display on the subject at the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Still, my familiarity with this background did little or nothing to diminish my wonder and delight when a rabbit so afflicted appeared in my north Minneapolis neighborhood when I was nine or ten. (Indeed, I’d always loved the display at the museum; though the tumors there depicted were, well, tumors – rather unappealing, not to say godawful, growths – I was nevertheless thrilled that some way, any way, a mythological creature could attain reality.) This rabbit was, of course, a totally average rabbit, an Eastern American Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus), ordinary in every way apart from the “antlers.” Its antlers were amazing, totally unlike what I’d seen in the museum. There were two of them, basically identical and parallel to each other, each of them in a rough Y shape, right between the ears. Their tips were blunt, and they were obviously not firm – they flopped just a bit as the rabbit ran – but they were otherwise, to all the world, just like antlers. They were dark brown, slightly darker than the rabbit’s fur, and roughly the same length as the ears. The rabbit did not appear to be bothered by them; it never seemed to pay them any mind at all.

The rabbit’s biggest problem, I think, was the fact that it was being constantly pursued by a young but nonetheless large and fearsome primate, namely myself. The information above was not all immediately apparent, and I would not report it so confidently had I not observed the animal in question for a prodigious number of man-hours. For all intents and purposes, I spent the entire summer either pursuing the rabbit, or looking for it so that I might do so. I was absolutely enchanted by this rabbit and its tumors.

One evening, the rabbit ran into a back yard, with me in hot pursuit, and then stopped and looked at me, its body tense. In the adjacent back yard there was a young couple having a barbecue. They looked over at the rabbit and at me, both of us frozen (it in fear, myself in science). There was a pause. Then the young woman asked me, with vague incredulity, “Does that rabbit have four ears?”

“No, it has antlers,” I replied, rather unscientifically. And then the rabbit was off, and so was I.

Though none of the local children were quite so taken with this animal as I was, it nevertheless was a reasonably frequent topic of conversation among them. And, perhaps predictably, the rabbit gained amazing powers in the telling of its tale. It was said to travel at such amazing speeds that one might have disproved the claims by pointing out that no small booms were to be heard around the neighborhood. One youth had seen it clear an entire garage in a single bound (though why it had seen fit to do this was not included in the narrative). I very much wanted to believe these tales, and, scientifically-minded lad that I was, I was always on the lookout for similar behavior in my observations of the animal. Alas – and obviously – there was none to be seen.

The following summer, the Jackalope was gone. I never did find out what happened to it.

To say that this Jackalope created my interest in cryptozoology would be misleading; my psyche was aimed squarely at monsters and unusual animals – dinosaurs, gryphons, Bigfoot, what have you – well in advance of the Jackalope summer. But it was most likely the appearance of this bizarre creature that solidified my interest in cryptozoology over, say, paleontology or mytho-zoology (though these have never lost their allure, either). It was this summer that proved to me that creatures of folklore and legend might well have at least some sort of reality to them. Hell, if not for that rabbit, I might well be engaged in reasonable, moneymaking pursuits right now. Damn it!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 7:00 am and is filed under The Kessen Run. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.