A number of years ago I traveled through the Bad Lands and stopped at Wall Drug and discovered the jackalope.

It turns out that others have been concerened about the origin of the jackalope. (Hard to believe.)

Jackalope fans, take note:

The jackalope is commonly believed to have originated in the folklore of the midwestern United States (Here are several pictures of jackalopes). Mounted heads of this legendary animal (a jackrabbit with the horns of a young antelope or deer) are offered for sale at truck stops, roadside restaurants (and now on the WWW) all over the country; even U.S. presidents have owned mounted jackalopes. There are also several www sites devoted to jackalopes and they are occasionally covered in popular articles. Like snipe hunts, jackalope hunts have been used as a ritual form of hazing in rural communities.

However, a far older reference to a horned rabbit ("raurackl" in German) is shown in the picture on the right. It was painted by Joris Hoefnagel in the late 1500's. Albrecht Durer aficionados will note Hoefnagel's copy of Durer's famous rabbit at the left of this picture (see it in it's full glory at The National Gallery of Art www site.) Fritz Koreney (Albrecht Durer and the Animal and Plant Studies of the Renaissance,Little, Brown and Co., Boston, 1985, p. 138) notes that the raurackl, or "stag- hare," was legendary among Bavarian hunters. Perhaps immigrants to the U.S. from Bavaria brought the raurackl legend with them and it has become our modern jackalope.
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A recent post at reenhead.com confirmed it.

So, when I was a kid, I lived in Munich for some time. One day, we discovered the Jagdmuseum - Hunter's Museum - right in the city center. Anyway, we went from exhibit to exhibit, which featured various items from 14th century guns to deer and other nifty things that 10 year olds appreciate. At the end of the museum, the lights dim and you enter a room full strange looking birds. Ok, so I'm looking at the birds, thinking that they're some new owl species - YIKES! That's not a fucking owl! It's got teeth and horns, and webbed feet, and a beaver tail, and and and....

They're called wolpertinger, and they only appear late at night when the Bavarian hunter is drunk on Hefeweizen.

Wanna see what they look like?

Wolpertinger-Galerie