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On the Trail of the Jackalope: How a Legend Captured the World's Imagination and Helped Us Cure Cancer

2023; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 136; Issue: 541 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5406/15351882.136.541.17

1535-1882

Moira Marsh,

Empathy and Medical Education

The jackalope—a purported cross between a jackrabbit and an antelope—is a figure of American folklore with manifestations in both narrative and material culture. In this accessible book aimed at a general audience, Michael P. Branch takes the reader on an enjoyable lope through hoaxes, tall tales, taxidermy, popular culture, and virology.The trail begins in the town of Douglas, Wyoming, which lays claim to being the home of the first jackalope mount, made by brothers Ralph and Douglas Herrick around 1932 (the exact date is uncertain). Chapter 2 is an extended introduction to the tall-tale genre, where we learn, among other things, that the foal of a burro is called a burrito. Folklorist Trevor Blank makes a star appearance in the next chapter, which focuses on hoaxes in general and taxidermy hoaxes in particular. Branch observes that a jackalope mount demands an assessment of its authenticity.Everywhere he went, Branch talked to the people responsible for and chiefly interested in the jackalope, thereby introducing readers to a gallery of fascinating characters. Among the most compelling are Mike Herrick and Frank English, two contemporary jackalope makers who are a study in contrasts. Mike is the son of Douglas Herrick, the man who, with his brother Ralph, created the first mounted jackalope in the early 1930s, from the body of a rabbit and some antelope horns. Mike is a craftsman, an artist, short-spoken, wary of the limelight, and interested only in achieving taxidermic perfection. In contrast, Frank is “the Benjamin Franklin of Jackalopes,” who devotes his considerable ingenuity to figuring out how to produce and sell as many mounts as possible, claiming to have made at least 200,000 of them (p. 78). A third attention-catching character is Sean O'Brien, obsessed with collecting every jackalope postcard in existence.Three chapters follow with a survey of jackalope motifs in art, film, music, literature, and kitsch; an overview of monsters and cryptobiology; and an introduction to the German Wolpertinger along with trickster rabbits and horned rabbits in world mythologies. The global range of this motif undoubtedly comes from the factual occurrence in nature of horned rabbits, the victims of a virus that causes cancerous skin growths that resemble horns. Branch tells the story of how a scientist isolated the virus behind these “warty rabbits,” a discovery that laid the groundwork for the human papillomavirus vaccine, which protects against cervical cancer. Having thus moved from taxidermy through folklore to science, the book concludes with a blow-by-blow account of a taxidermy class where the author and other participants made their own jackalope mounts.On the Trail of the Jackalope: How a Legend Captured the World's Imagination and Helped Us Cure Cancer is highly engaging. The chapters that survey jackalope motifs drag somewhat, but most of the book sparkles with wit and thoughtfulness, prompting intriguing questions about the nature of hoaxes and related folkloric forms. Another strength is Branch's emphasis on the people behind the motif. In every encounter, he asks the same question: “Why do you think people love jackalopes?” His query assumes that everyone does indeed love these creatures, which my experience suggests may be mostly true—only one of the many people who have seen the flying jackalope in my office was creeped out, because, as an animal lover, she disapproved of taxidermy. Some folklorists might want to take up the unasked question, Why does this hybrid creature exist in the realm of ironic legend instead of the truly monstrous?The book includes 16 handsome, full-color plates between pages 46 and 47, but because they are unnumbered, they are difficult to find when referenced in the text. That grumble aside, the book is exceptionally well-written and full of humor (some corny, some hilarious). It might serve as a text for an introductory folklore class as it presents an accessible object lesson in the workings of folklore. In the opening pages, Branch contrasts the ubiquity of the jackalope—free from any intellectual property rights—with Disney products: “Nobody owns the jackalope, and no corporation or person is entitled to control its production, distribution, consumption, or interpretation. . . . The jackalope doesn't have a marketing department, but it has no trouble getting around” (p. xii). Long may the jackalope continue to roam free beyond the clutches of the mediatized entertainment behemoth.