Free Republic

The world lost the creators of two of its most celebrated bio-hoaxes recently: Douglas Herrick, father of the risibly ridiculous jackalope (half jackrabbit, half antelope), and Ray L. Wallace, paternal guardian of the less absurd Bigfoot. The jackalope enjoins laughter in response to such peripheral hokum as hunting licenses sold only to those whose IQs range between 50 and 72, bottles of the rare but rich jackalope milk, and additional evolutionary hybrids such as the jackapanda. Bigfoot, on the other hand, while occasionally eliciting an acerbic snicker, enjoys greater plausibility for a simple evolutionary reason: large hirsute apes currently roam...

ouglas Herrick, who gets both the credit and the blame for perhaps the tackiest totem of the American West, the jackalope — half bunny, half antelope and 100 percent tourist trap — died on Jan. 6 in Casper, Wyo. He was 82. The cause was bone and lung cancer, his brother, Ralph, said. Douglas Herrick lived in Casper, but it was in his hometown, Douglas, Wyo., that luck changed his life. In 1932 (other accounts say 1934, 1939 and 1940, but Ralph Herrick swears it was 1932), the Herrick brothers had returned from hunting. "We just throwed the dead jack...