Meowdy, pardners! I’ve just spent the afternoon researching the West’s most fascinating creature, the jackalope. You know, those cute little bunnies with the antlers that you sometimes see depicted on souvenir postcards or mounted on the wall of a trophy hunter? Seasoned cowboys tell tales of how jackalopes would lure greenhorns from the safety of their campfires by singing their names in a beautiful tenor. These hapless cowpokes would wander into the desert, never to be seen again! Others tell of jackalopes big enough to ride on.
Well, it turns out that no one can prove they’ve ever seen a real live jackalope in the wild. And while the cowboys would have us believe that’s because no one has ever faced down one of these brazen bunnies and lived to tell the tale, I’m beginning to get suspicious.
Are these antlered rabbits for real or are they an elaborate hoax? Luckily for us, an author named Michael P. Branch has already thoroughly researched this question. I won’t tell you what he concluded, but I will tell you that he found so many interesting stories that he wrote a book all about them called “On the Trail of the Jackalope: How a Legend Captured the World’s Imagination and Helped Us Cure Cancer.”
Mr. Branch will be visiting Grand County Public Library on Wednesday, Nov. 2 .at 6 p.m. to tell us all about these elusive creatures. Mr. Branch’s previous books “How to Cuss in Western” and “Rants from the Hill: On Packrats, Bobcats, Wildfires, Curmudgeons, a Drunken Mary Kay Lady & Other Encounters with the Wild in the High Desert” were hilarious, so this promises to be an entertaining evening. If you enjoy humorous tall tales, western lore and history, this free event is for you! Yeehaw and meow for now!
