FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE
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FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE
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WHAT’S IN A NAME? By Anne Koletzke and Mark Twain
Everyone else in the world calls them hares. But we in the United States call them jackrabbits. Why is that? It turns out Mark Twain provides the answer in Roughing It, an account of his travels around the Wild West from 1861-1867: As the sun was going down, we saw the first specimen of an animal known familiarly over two thousand miles of mountain and desert—from Kansas clear to the Pacific Ocean—as the “jackass rabbit.” He is well named. He is just like any other rabbit, except that he is from one third to twice as large, has longer legs in proportion to his size, and has the most preposterous ears that ever were mounted on any creature but a jackass. When he is sitting quiet, thinking about his sins, or is absent-minded or unapprehensive of danger, his majestic ears project above him conspicuously; but the breaking of a twig will scare him nearly to death, and then he tilts his ears back gently and starts for home. All you can see, then, for the next minute, is his long gray form stretched out straight and “streaking it” through the low sage-brush, head erect, eyes right, and ears just canted a little to the rear, but showing you where the animal is, all the time, the same as if he carried a jib. Now and then he makes a marvelous spring with his long legs, high over the stunted sage-brush, and scores a leap that would make a horse envious. Presently he comes down to a long, graceful “lope,” and shortly he mysteriously disappears. He has crouched behind a sage-bush, and will sit there and listen and tremble until you get within six feet of him, when he will get under way again. . . [And when] He is frightened clear through. . . he lays his long ears down on his back, straightens himself out like a yard-stick every spring he makes, and scatters miles behind him with an easy indifference that is enchanting. Edgewood’s jackrabbits are black-tailed jackrabbits or, Lepus californicus. And how are they different from bunny rabbits? You’ll have to tune in next time for the answer to that hare-raising question. | ||||||
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