A golden memory.

I've met him in person btw and he's a fucking sweetheart

[ID: Text-intensive Twitter thread from the Shapeshifters chest binders Twitter account in reply to a post by artist and author Ursula Vernon. Vernon says, A non-zero number of you apparently did not know that The Last Unicorn was a book before it was a movie. It is by Peter S. Beagle. It is made of spun glass and fairytales and iron knives and there are individual lines that I would give my lungs to have written. Shapechangers replies, I saw him every year at NYCC for several years straight, bought something at his table, asked him to sign it, and we spoke. He remembered me from year to year, no small feat at that con. He remembered which stories he'd told me. One year I came back with a different gender on. He squinted at me a bit and said thoughtfully, "I've seen you before in this place." All I had to say was, "last year you told me the story about the inoshishi." And his face cleared, and he leaned in with a grin and told me about a German guitarist who he traveled with, twice. Who transitioned between the first and second time, so he'd gotten to meet this person all over again on the second round. It was a wonderfully kind way to let me know that everything was fine. I was fresh out of the closet and I needed that, and maybe he could see it. The Last Unicorn is the best book in the world and I will defend it and its author til I die. the end. /end ID]

I don't usually talk about celebrities; artists, when I do, and I'm keenly aware that one needn't be a good person to be a hell of a heartwrenching artist. But Peter S. Beagle has written a few of my favorite things in the world, he's an excellent singer and filker, and this Twitter thread was dreadfully important to me. I don't want it going away as Twitter becomes Shitter, because it's so often bad news, isn't it? It's important to me to share trans joy.

Black solid color binder

Shapeshifters (@shapeshiftersinc)

link: https://shapeshifters.co/product/solid-color-binders/

binding level: 4.5

comfort level: 5

sensory level: 4.5

breathability: 4.5

overall: 5

do you experience sensory issues? Not always, but a lot of the time

would you recommend this binder? Absolutely!!

October 7th, 2023

other notes:

these are made from your measurements so they fit SO well! They’re on the expensive side ($85), but it’s absolutely worth it! Took me from a D cup to just under an A!

:D this was the binder I just bought and it works so well- couldn’t recommend these enough

First, please look at the incredible job our hemming wizard did in machine-trimming off this perfectly straight line of Mikus. When the serger is going top speed, this kind of precision is no small feat.

Second, what do I do with a thin spandex Miku ribbon? Now taking ideas.

What’s the difference is between the 10” wide stiff insert and the 8”? Which one is default? Back when I ordered my first binder from y’all (which is AWESOME, I am now buying my mesh binder because I would like to be able to bind in the summer while living in Wilmington without acute risk of heatstroke), it was just “stiff insert, yes or no?” so I’m unsure which one to pick now since I definitely need one

8" is sufficient for many of our customers, and was our default prior to this change. We recomend 10" wide inserts if your chest-underchest difference is 10" or greater, or if you find you pop out of the bottom of most other binders.

It's Mothman Tuesday again, and did you know that design takes math? Lots and lots of math.

Mothman 2.0 is gonna have much firmer wings.

Fresno Night[crawler|walker]

Look at this fucking shitpost. It could have been born on late-night tumblr in 2010. Look at this weird little guy (affectionate) (gender neutral). Look at this pair of ambulatory pants.

Maybe that’s the first thing that grabs me: the Fresno Nightcrawler is an animated piece of clothing. So many old-fashioned ghost stories start like this: a white dress in a second-story window turns out to be a fluttering lace curtain, a tall man turns out to be a coat and hat on a rack. Princess Aurora put a coat on an owl and had herself a dancing partner.

This one is a pair of white sweatpants. As genderless an article of clothing as anyone could possibly wish.

I want to hug it so much.

We designed this houndstooth to reflect that eerie softness, trying to evoke something simultaneously huggable and deeply unapproachable. That's queer vibes.

Cryptid Collection Spotlight: The Fresno Nightcrawler

Today we're infodumping about the last of the six cryptids we chose to feature in our Cryptid Collection! Check out our The Cryptid Collection tag to see our previous spotlights and share your own thoughts, feelings, and experiences too!

Our last cryptid spotlight is that viral sensation, the Fresno Nightcrawler.

👣The Cryptid Collection 🦿Fresno Nightcrawler Travel Poster 👖Fresno Nightcrawler Binders & Sportsbras 🧵Fresno Nightcrawler fabric designs

Some sources claim that the first sightings of the Fresno Nightcrawler date back to the 1990's. But it came to the attention of the internet in 2007, back when we didn't really call it "going viral" and YouTube was mostly a repository for random odd video clips.

The one that was passed around forums and chat rooms and LiveJournal communities that introduced us all to the Fresno Nightcrawler was perhaps surprising in its simplicity. It was a snippet from the security camera footage of someone's yard in Fresno, California. Being footage from a personal security camera in the late '00s, in addition to the fact that the footage was being taken at night, the original video was already quite grainy, and has only gotten moreso on today's higher resolution screens. But even with the low picture quality, you can still make out two figures that appear to be mostly legs strutting into view from the top left of the frame, across the lawn, then out of frame again at the bottom right.

And that was it. The clip was less than a minute long, with no sound or context. But the odd look of the things, and the awkward, stiff yet wobbly way they walked made us go wild for them. Thus one of the internet's favorite cryptids was born.

Another video surfaced not long after, this time allegedly from a trail cam at Yosemite National Park. Similar in quality to the original Fresno footage, the Yosemite footage shows two Nightcrawlers, one much smaller than the other, traveling down a tree-lined trail, from the left of the frame to the right.

You can find some articles online claiming that the Fresno Nightcrawlers are "terrorizing" people. But that's not really backed up by the fact that all of the documented sightings — Fresno, Yosemite, and most recently Billings, Montana — show them just ... walking. The only reports of anyone being terrorized are the man who took the original Fresno footage claiming that he set up the security camera because his dogs were barking at night and he wanted to find out why.

Regardless of what the Fresno Nightcrawlers are, be they aliens or a previously unknown critter or some magically animated pants, it's clear that all they really want is to go for a nice moonlit stroll. And isn't it just fitting that the cryptid that truly belongs to the internet is just a Weird Little Guy who just wants to touch grass?

That's So Jersey (Devil)

I grew up in New Jersey and so have been surrounded by cryptid lore pretty much my entire life. I know anyone who’s never lived in NJ won’t really understand what I mean by that because for some reason this lore doesn’t really breach beyond the state, so I’ll briefly explain: New Jersey has an official state cryptid, the New Jersey Devil or the Jersey Devil, and it is a huge part of New Jersey culture. I had entire lessons devoted to it in school and a whole meeting devoted to it in the girlscouts where they even brought in an expert to talk about it. A lot of non-Jerseyites think that NJ’s hockey team is named after the Christian devil, but no, the New Jersey Devils are named for the cryptid, as decided by a public poll when New Jersey acquired the team in 1982. Everything weird and underground and punk has some kind of reference to the Jersey Devil in the name or branding or artwork. The most popular indie magazine in the state, Weird N.J. (you might have caught the founders’ short-lived History Channel series, Weird U.S.), has a regular section that features stories and sightings of the Jersey Devil. And, like I said, it’s the official state cryptid.

The Jersey Devil is as much a part of New Jersey culture as Jersey tomatoes, loving our Jersey-born musicians (Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Sinatra), driving on highways, summers at the Shore, having a toxic love-hate relationship with New York City and Philadelphia, and flipping off anyone who trashtalks us like New Jersey’s the only state with corrupt politicians, over-development problems, and self-important twenty-somethings who haven’t learned moderation.

My point is, because of the Jersey Devil's prominence in Jersey culture, I grew up steeped in cryptid lore.

In seventh grade I was assigned my very first research paper and my subject was paranormal phenomena. I dedicated two entire sections in that paper to Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.

One of my Christmas gifts that year was “Cryptozoology A to Z” by Loren Coleman & Jerome Clark.

Cryptids have always been a part of my world. So it was probably inevitable that I'd be involved in a cryptid-themed project.

-Krista

My Encounter With the Jersey Devil

Every Spring, since 1984, the New Jersey Audubon Society hosts the World Series of Birding (WSB). Much in the vein of fundraising walks and runs, the WSB is a marathon aimed at raising money and awareness towards a specific cause (bird and nature conservation). Competitors in the WSB are tasked with identifying, by either sight or sound, as many bird species as they can in a 24 hour period. While there are multiple ways to compete, the top level teams, which often include career birders, collect pledges through their own dedicated website, travel all over New Jersey in that 24 hour period to identify birds, and must be present at the finish line at Cape May Point State Park at midnight at the end of the competition.

Around 2005, a friend of mine (we’ll call her Robin) was enthusiastically getting me into birding and proposed we compete in the WSB. She had another birding friend from the West Coast (we’ll call him Jay) who wanted to come visit and the WSB was the perfect excuse. We competed under the second level, which allowed for a more casual competition, essentially treating the weekend like an excuse for an intensive birding holiday, without the fundraising and finish line requirements. This was at least in part because of my own inexperience; but I was excited and eager and, equally important, had a car and the ability and willingness to chauffeur the three of us around Cape May County for the weekend.

Robin and Jay spent the days leading up to the WSB mapping and scheduling out the birding spots we would hit, while I spent them studying up on my visual and audio ID’s (a harder task back before there were easily accessed videos and archives of bird call recordings online). The morning of the competition, we piled into my little Pontiac Sunfire and headed south.

The original plan was that we’d arrive at our hotel in Cape May in the afternoon, eat, get some sleep, and then head out to hit our first spot at midnight. Unfortunately, late in the night, Robin wasn’t feeling well. So we pivoted. Robin would stay at the hotel to get some more rest while Jay and I headed out to the first spot. After we were done, we would swing back by the hotel and, hopefully, Robin would feel better and we’d all pile back into the car to continue competing.

Since the start of the WSB is at midnight, the first spot on our list was a prime location to identify the nocturnal birds on the species list — owls, of course, but also water birds called rails. This brought us to one of the most rural spots we visited that weekend, the kind of rural spot that most people don’t believe exists in New Jersey. Jake’s Landing is an earthen boat launch in the middle of a wetlands creek, that’s accessed via Jake’s Landing Road, a 1.3 mile long dirt road that winds through a white pine forest. While you can see the light pollution from the surrounding towns in the distance, the area immediately around the landing is so dark the only light is from the moon and the vast expanse of stars.

ID-ing rails required parking at the Landing and listening for the birds out in the marshy waters. But since it’s such a well-known spot for good birding, there were always other birders standing out there with you, also desperately listening for the rails. The owls, however, weren’t out in the wetlands, they were back in the woods. Which meant that to ID owls, we had to pull over to the side of the road, turn off the car, turn off the headlights, get out of the car, and stand there in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night in almost complete darkness to listen for owls. Now, I am a child of suburbia. I wasn’t used to that kind of darkness. I wasn’t used to just being outside in the middle of the night without a car between me and whatever might be lurking beyond what my eyes could see. I definitely wasn’t used to spending time that deep in the woods, and certainly not at night. Not to mention that just a few years before this, in 1999, The Blair Witch Project had come out to the kind of hype we hadn’t seen for a horror movie since Nightmare on Elm Street and wouldn’t see again until Saw. A found footage film about three college-aged film-makers camping out in the woods to investigate the local legend of the Blair Witch, only to become victims of the Witch themselves, I loved The Blair Witch Project, it’s probably my favorite horror movie to this day. But part of that love came from the fact that it scared the crap out of me.

I was not looking forward to owl hunting.

Jay and I left Robin at the hotel to sleep and drove out to Jake’s Landing. We stood around listening to rails for a while; I don’t remember if we ID���d any on that particular stop, but we did close out the weekend with at least one rail ID’d on our list. Then we drove back into the woods, pulled over, turned off the car, and got out …��

And everything was fine. Really. I mean, we didn’t hear any owls, which sucked (spoilers: I wouldn’t hear an owl in real life for another 5 years or so). But I actually wasn’t bothered at all. It was dark and quiet and I couldn’t see anything beyond about three or four rows of trees beyond the road, but it wasn’t even a little bit freaky. After a while we both agreed that we weren’t hearing anything and it was about time for us to go pick up Robin, so we got back in the car and headed back to civilization.

We spent the rest of the day traveling all over Cape May County, hiking around bird sanctuaries and nature preserves, tromping over farms, strolling along boardwalks. I got to see red-tailed hawks and bald eagles and egrets and a purple gallinule that had made its way up to New Jersey from Florida for some reason. We stopped for snacks and meals at the whatever the nearest Wawa was, caught naps in parking lots, saw other birders ranging from casual twenty-somethings like us, little kids on school field trips, and well-aged professionals with camera equipment that probably cost more than my used Sunfire.

Then, as night fell again and the diurnal birds tucked into their nests for the night, there was only one thing left to do: head back to Jake’s Landing to try again for the rails and owls. I wasn’t worried this time, since I’d gotten through the first time without getting even a tiny bit spooked. We drove out to the Landing, and listened for a while; again, I don’t remember which trip it was, but we were only able to ID one rail all weekend. Then we headed back into the woods, pulled over, turned off the car, and got out to listen.

But something was different. It was still just as dark, just as quiet, just as isolated, though this time we had another person in our group. By all rights, I shouldn’t have had any trouble standing out there and listening for owls. But the second I closed my car door, I could feel it. Something was wrong. I still couldn’t see anything past the third or fourth line of trees past the road, but it felt like I was being watched — we were being watched. The longer we stood there, the more time my imagination had to run wild, the more certain I became that whoever — or whatever — was out there, intended us harm. We weren’t welcome. I couldn’t have focused on owls even if there’d been any to focus on, I could only think about the growing feeling in my gut that someone or something was out there in the dark seething at us, watching and waiting.

Finally, just as the feeling was becoming too much, just as I was about to suggest we go, Robin spoke up. We weren’t hearing anything, it was getting close to midnight anyway, we should just head back to the hotel and get some sleep before we had to drive home in the morning. I don’t think I even responded, I just remember snapping open my door, practically throwing myself inside, and turning the car and headlights back on before Jay and Robin had even sat down, so eager was I to be in the relative safety of my little Sunfire. We finished the drive along Jake’s Landing Road in silence. I was perhaps driving a little more quickly than I should have along a dirt road a little too narrow for two cars to comfortably pass, but I was beyond ready to get back to the main road with its asphalt and street lights and unblocked views of the surrounding area.

After having the uneasiness of the darkness washed away by blessed halogen, I finally told Robin that if she hadn’t said something when she had, I’d been ready pull the plug over how freaked out I’d felt. Which was when she admitted that the reason she’d spoken up was because she’d also felt freaked out and couldn’t stand out there any longer. We spent the drive back to the hotel comparing notes, Robin expressing a similar feeling about being watched, and me explaining how I hadn’t experienced anything close to that on my earlier owl hunt with Jay.

Robin and I had both been raised in New Jersey, had grown up surrounded by stories of the Jersey Devil, and knew when we set out on this trip that we’d be spending much of the weekend hiking around areas within the Pine Barrens, the alleged territory of the Jersey Devil.

So what other conclusion could we come to than that we’d just had an encounter with the Jersey Devil itself?

-Krista

I was supposed to post about the squonk yesterday. Instead, I lay down after baby bedtime and stared at the ceiling, contemplating the futility of effort until it all hazed away.

So, in a way, i did post about the squonk. It was just performance art. Sorry you missed it.

Cryptid Collection Spotlight: The Jersey Devil

We're going to be spending this week infodumping about the six cryptids we chose to feature in our Cryptid Collection! We'll be posting about the lore and origins, our thoughts, experiences, and relationships with all of these cryptids, and we encourage folks to share their own!

Today we're talking about fabric and poster designer, Krista's, home state's official cryptid, the Jersey Devil.

👣The Cryptid Collection 🦌Jersey Devil Travel Posters 🦇Jersey Devil Binders & Sportsbras 🧵Jersey Devil fabric designs

I've done a lot of research into the cryptids we've been posting about this week, spending literal hours on most of these posts to make sure I'm getting all the details right.

But just this once, for the Jersey Devil I'm not going to do that. Instead, I'm going to include all of you in the true New Jersey oral tradition of telling you the version (or versions) of the Jersey Devil's origin that I was told growing up to the best of my memory.

In the depths of the Pine Barrens of colonial southern New Jersey, a woman discovered that she was pregnant. Her name might have been Mother Leeds, or she may have simply been from the town of Leeds Point, NJ, the many versions of the story don't always agree. But what might normally be a joyous moment for many people, was a cause for despair for her. Because, you see, this woman already had twelve children and her family was struggling to survive. Some versions of the story say her family was simply poor; others that her husband drank and gambled away what money they had. But regardless of any other contributing factors, raising and providing for twelve children is difficult in any time period, and it was under these conditions that the woman in our story discovered she was once again pregnant, now with her thirteenth child.

As this version of the story goes, the woman, upon discovering this news, climbed to the top of a nearby hill and shouted to the heavens, "Let this one be a devil!!"

The baby came on a dark and possibly stormy night. The entire family was in attendance as well as at least one midwife. The birth itself went smoothly and the baby was born normal and healthy. But as the midwife held it just moments after it was born, it began changing. It grew fur, its body twisted and elongated, a tail sprouted from its hips, and wings from its back. It became a devil.

What happened after that varies in order. In some versions, the newly born Jersey Devil simply flew from the house, escaping out into the woods. In others, it flew up the chimney and force of it passing so quickly through the narrow passage created an explosion that destroyed the house down to its foundations. In still others, the Jersey Devil flew through the house, murdering the family that cursed and rejected it, and only then escaped out into the woods that would come to be its home.

Sightings of the Jersey Devil have been plentiful over the centuries since, and it's no wonder given that its territory of the Pine Barrens covers over half the state. The most notable rash of sightings came during the week of January 16-23 in 1909, known among Jersey Devil enthusiasts as Phenomenal Week. It's been claimed that there was a similar period of activity with the Jersey Devil terrorizing people all over New Jersey in 1709, prompting the state to hire a priest to bless the Pine Barrens and seal the Jersey Devil away for exactly two hundred years. Naturally this explains that the events of Phenomenal Week were the result of the seal breaking and the Jersey Devil lashing out. In fact the Jersey Devil was so active that week that it was seen in bordering states, Pennsylvania and New York, and even as far away as Maryland.

Jersey Devil sightings are hardly a thing of the past, though. Continuing well into the current millennium, reports of large, shadowy, winged creatures lurking in the woods and swooping unsuspecting people; as well as cloven hoofprints being found in the snow traveling all over entire towns, mysteriously starting and stopping, even traversing over the roofs of houses.

You can probably imagine then why some folks say that anyone who spends a night in south Jersey comes away from it believing in the Jersey Devil.

Cryptid Collection Spotlight: The Squonk

We're going to be spending this week infodumping about the six cryptids we chose to feature in our Cryptid Collection! We'll be posting about the lore and origins, our thoughts, experiences, and relationships with all of these cryptids, and we encourage folks to share their own!

Today we're talking about the most #relatable cryptid, the Squonk.

👣The Cryptid Collection 🗺️Cryptid Travel Posters 👥Cryptid Binders & Sportsbras 🧵Cryptid fabric designs

Much like the Jackalope that we spotlighted yesterday, the Squonk is a creature from tall tales of the previous centuries.

Descriptions of the Squonk nearly all originate from the same source. Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods was a 1910 collaboration between William Thomas Cox, Minnesota's first State Forester and Commissioner of conservation, who wrote the text; Coert du Bois, US Consul and forester, who drew the illustrations; and George Bishop Sudworth, Chief Dendrologist of the Forest Service, who created the Latin classifications. In the introduction, Cox claims that the fantastical field guide was born out of a desire to preserve some of the tall tales invented by lumberjacks and the stories they told about them around campfires "to regale newcomers and frighten people unfamiliar with the woods". The guide details twenty creatures from heavily wooded regions all over the US. There on page 31, between the Hodag of Wisconsin and Minnesota, and the Whirling Whimpus of Tennessee, lies our friend, the Squonk.

Later texts inspired by Fearsome Creatures expanded on the lore, describing, among other things, a mass migration from its original widespread territory that resulted in the evolution of webbed toes, but only on its left feet; wax and hair-covered ears; crooked yellow tusks; and asexual reproduction through cell division. But Cox's original, much more straightforward description, seems to have truly stood the test of time.

The Squonk, like many regional cryptids, has a fairly small territory, being limited to the hemlock forests of northern Pennsylvania. Cox claims that those familiar with the Squonk describe it as being "the most morbid of beasts". These days, we might interpret that to mean a fearsome creature that lurks in the darkest, thickest part of the woods, hunting unsuspecting lumberjacks who unknowingly wander into its territory and toying with them the way a cat toys with a mouse. Quite the contrary, though, the Squonk is described as morbid because of its constant weeping, the source of which is the skin which hangs off of it in wrinkles as if it were a piece of much too large clothing, and its many warts and moles.

While the Squonk is most active during the twilight and dusk hours, it can also be found traveling at night. In fact, Cox relates that "frosty moonlight nights" are the best conditions for Squonk hunters, as it doesn't like to move much at all on those nights, and its tears flow more slowly. Why might slowly flowing tears be an advantage, especially when the trail those tears leave behind in the Squonk's wake are an easy way for hunters to track it? Why, because the more scared the Squonk is, the more tears it cries, and likely it is to be completely dissolved by those tears.

In fact, this curious characteristic is described in the only encounter related by Cox:

Mr. J. P. Wentling, formerly of Pennsylvania, but now at St. Anthony Park, Minnesota, had a disappointing experience with a Squonk near Mont Alto. He made a clever capture by mimicking the Squonk and inducing it to hop into a sack, in which he was carrying it home, when suddenly the burden lightened and the weeping ceased. Wentling unslung the sack and looked in. There was nothing by tears and bubbles.

It's probably fairly obvious why an inherently queer company selling garments intended to relieve body dysphoria would relate to a creature like the Squonk, which is so uncomfortable in its own skin that it simply can't stop crying. But we're certainly not the first to feel empathy and kinship with the Squonk. In fact 2024 marks the second annual Squonkapalooza in Johnstown, PA, hoping to "turn those frowns upside down. Spreading the love of the Squonk might cheer them up."

Which is fair! I think that if most of us discovered a festival organized and attended out of pure love and empathy for us we'd probably feel a little bit better about ourselves.

The Jackalope.

Listen. Listen. All tricksters are queer.

Y'all know this. Loki fandom has been shouting about this on this blue website for thirteen years. Bugs Bunny ain't straight. Homestuck's trickster hero is a trans girl because a fan found a signed Toblerone in a cave, and that shit was meant to be. Any trickster story is a story about transgression. The prehistory of queer stories is trickster myth.

But wait, I hear you say. Is the jackalope actually a trickster? It's a taxidermy prank, isn't it? Something you find mounted on a wall. The tricks are played by the hunters who dare each other to find one, the Wyoming Game and Fish Dept issuing hunting licenses, but does the jackalope play tricks?

Yes. Yes he does.

Exhibit A: every horned rabbit myth you can find.

Exhibit B: this thing.

This is a recurring skit of America's Funniest People, and yes, that co-host is Arleen Sorkin, the real-life Harley Quinn.

Here's the jackalope straight-up Bugs-Bunnying a capitalist.

How do you gay-trickster your way into clothing? I'm going to play with illusion, with negative space, with asymmetry and unexpected shapes. (Is that horns or is it lightning? Yes.)

This is the first design I started, and I get to start sewing next week. I can't wait.

Cryptid Collection Spotlight: The Jackalope

We're going to be spending this week infodumping about the six cryptids we chose to feature in our Cryptid Collection! We'll be posting about the lore and origins, our thoughts, experiences, and relationships with all of these cryptids, and we encourage folks to share their own!

Today we're talking about the Goncharov of cryptids, the Jackalope!

👣The Cryptid Collection 🐇Jackalope Travel Poster 👥Cryptid Binders & Sportsbras 🧵Cryptid fabric designs

Myths, legends, and tales of horned rabbits or hares have existed throughout human history and across the globe, from Central America to 13th century Persia and throughout Europe.

But we're not here to talk about those. We're here to talk about the Goncharov of cryptids, the Jackalope.

The lore of the Jackalope is particularly fun because it's a centuries-long exercise in collective storytelling. It's hard to say what the first stories were and where they originated, which is unusual with US cryptids. Even if the veracity of the reports and photos is in question, we do generally know where and when sightings of other cryptids happened, with documented newspaper articles, police reports, and the like. They detail what happened and what the cryptid looked like and where exactly they were spotted.

But instead of dates and locations and detailed descriptions of encounters, what we have for the Jackalope are lists traits, mostly unrelated, all layered on top of each other, each more outlandish than the last. It's easy to see the ways the lore of the Jackalope was told and built upon over and over — a collective folklore invented by anyone inspired to add to it and enthusiastically encouraged and welcomed by the rest.

The Jackalope is a hare, indistinguishable from a normal hare (also sometimes called a jackrabbit) except save for the pair of antelope-like antlers growing from its head — hence the name, Jackalope (not to be confused with the antelope jackrabbit, which is just a normal hare native to Arizona and Mexico). It's a fearsome antagonist of hunters, who have to include stovepipes in their regular hunting gear to wear as leg armor or risk being gored by the vicious Jackalope's horns. But a hunter can leave out some whiskey at night, preferably during a full moon, and wait for the Jackalope to chug it down and they'll have no problem hunting that wily, but now drunk, Jackalope. Which, of course, when cooked tastes quite similar to lobster. When cowboys would sit out in the desert singing songs around the campfire, the Jackalope would sing back to them, mimicking their voices. Or maybe it would sing along, always taking the tenor harmony. Maybe it only did that when there also happened to be a lightning storm. Because, of course, the Jackalope has an affinity for lightning storms, since it can only breed within the microseconds of a lightning flash.

The crowning glory of collective meme of the Jackalope, though, was the brainchild of two brothers, Douglas and Ralph Herrick, in Douglas, Wyoming. According to Ralph, the two returned from a hunting trip in 1932 having bagged, among other things, a jackrabbit which they tossed haphazardly into their taxidermy shop. It landed amongst some deer antlers and Douglas was struck with inspiration. They attached the antlers to the jackrabbit's head, mounted it in the style of a hunting trophy, and sold their newly minted Jackalope for $10 (around $214 today) to the owner of a local hotel who displayed it in the lobby.

That first Jackalope head started a whole Jackalope taxidermy business for the Herricks, which eventually exploded into a modern day Jackalope industry. Books have been written, adding to the meme with winks and nods back to the Herricks and Douglas, WY. In fact both the town of Douglas and the greater Wyoming have enthusiastically taken up the adopted and added to the lore. You can find informative articles about the Jackalope on official government websites. Stores in Douglas sell Jackalope milk. And the local Chamber of Commerce issues Jackalope hunting licenses, which permits the bearer to go Jackalope hunting on June 31st, between midnight and 2:00 AM, but only provided the hunter has an IQ between 50 and 72.

Of course when you read anything about the Jackalope, you'll inevitably see something about Shope papilloma virus. Because even when the meme is obviously a meme, there will always be someone who wants to try to explain what it "really" is.

But we don't think the Jackalope really needs explaining. The Jackalope is the manifestation of the human desire to connect and make a Weird Little Guy and tell each other stories about it.

Chaymp.

Listen. Vermont is small. The mountains are stubby, the people are sparsely settled, the state itself can be crossed in an afternoon. Our field of view is short; there's always a mountain or six lifting up out of the horizon to block the way, and though they won't have the height of the Rockies they sure will keep you from seeing the next twenty miles.

Travel and the scenery will change every thirty minutes, a new mountain ridge visible over the next, and the next, and the next. The landscape comes in layers, each a little grey-greener and foggier than the one before. When the clouds gather at the base of the mountains, the dark ridges that emerge look like dragons floating through the mist.

I've lived on flat land. I've lived by the seashore. I've gone out my front door and seen the earth or the ocean stretch forth, seen the sky come down to meet it at an impossibly far-distant line. It's awful. Sorry. I know there's poetry about that, I know it inspires probably more people than it puts off. But I'm cozy up here, with my little gently-rolled Appalachians hemming me in on all sides.

And Lake Champlain is big! It's got that oceanic quality, where you can't always see the other side of it and there are deep currents running beneath. Of course there's a sea serpent in that lake, a monster, a swimming dragon as thick as a barrel and as long as a city bus. Plenty of folks have seen it. It hit me when I got there: we need to see it. We need that dragon's back layer, that extra ridge, that mystery for more mysteries to hide behind. You get used to the mountains up here, the way they halt the eye even when they're shrouded in mist. It feels bad to be able to see all the way clear to New York.

That's not to say Champ isn't actually there. It's just to say that Vermonters as a people are probably predisposed to look for it.

Cryptid Collection Spotlight: Champ

We're going to be spending this week infodumping about the six cryptids we chose to feature in our Cryptid Collection! We'll be posting about the lore and origins, our thoughts, experiences, and relationships with all of these cryptids, and we encourage folks to share their own!

Today we're talking about our home state's very own lake monster, Champ!

👣The Cryptid Collection 🐍Champ Travel Poster 👥Cryptid Binders & Sportsbras 🧵Cryptid fabric designs

There is no shortage of sea serpents and lake monsters all over the globe, the most famous of all them of course residing in the depths of Loch Ness in Scotland. But did you know that our home state of Vermont has its very own lake monster?

Champ, like Nessie, is named after the lake it calls home — in this case, Lake Champlain, which borders northeastern New York to the west, southern Quebec to the north, and northwestern Vermont to the east. Though while sightings of Champ have been reported up and down the shores of Lake Champlain, in Vermont, at least, it's the city of Burlington that's adopted Champ as its own.

By absolute happenstance, of the six cryptids we chose to feature in our collection, three of them have origin stories or momentous first sightings, and three of them just kind of ... exist. Champ is one of the latter. While there have been sightings of unusual marine life in Lake Champlain as far back as 1609 by the lake's modern namesake, Samuel de Champlain, there hasn't really been one explosive or momentous moment in Champ's history.

Reports of a "serpent" in Lake Champlain have come in fairly steadily every few years since around 1819, with most encounters amounting to either seeing the serpent writhing around near the surface, or simply swimming along with multiple humps and sometimes its head visible above the water. The physical descriptions have often varied from sighting to sighting. It was described by some as being silver, while others claimed it was "drab", while a Captain by the name of Crum reported to the Plattburgh Republican newspaper in 1819 that it was black with several distinct markings, including a white star on its forehead and red band around its neck. Some report spikes along its back, some horns "like those of a huge catfish", some three teeth. While, as far as size goes, it's been reported to be as short as 20 feet long, to as long as 187 feet.

So is it any wonder that debunkers over the centuries have had a hard time narrowing down just what Champ "really" is? The most common theory might be a sturgeon, other theories include catfish, seals, otters, snakes, and, in the case of a reported "baby sea serpent" caught by a Chaplain Transportation Company employee, a salamander.

Still, for all the discrepancies between the eye witness reports, Champ has continued to keep both the region's and the country's fascination since those early reports. Even P.T. Barnum got in on the action, not once but twice! In 1873, Barnum contacted a reporter at the Whitehall Times offering $50,000 (around $1.3 million today) for anyone who could provide him with "the hide of the great Champlain Serpent", plus any additional funds needed in "securing the monster's remains".

That didn't quite pan out for him, though, so fourteen years later, in 1887, he announced to a reporter in Boston that he was still very interested in being the first person to possess physical proof of "the Lake Champlain sea serpent". Though his offered reward had dropped by that point to a mere $20,000 (around $650,000 today) while expanding his requirement to "dead or alive [...] providing that the serpent is more than fifty feet in length."

A brief aside: That 1887 article closes by calling Champ "his snakeship" and I, for one, will not be referring to His Snakeship, Champ, without his proper title from now on.

Barnum never got his proof, but with the advent of photography, there have been many photos snapped of His Snakeship, Champ, particularly with the modern advent of point-and-click personal cameras. The most notable was taken by a woman named Sandra Mansi on a family vacation in 1977. It appears to show the narrow neck and bulbous head of an animal curling up out of the water and around as if to look behind it. It remains one of the clearest photographs of His Snakeship, Champ to this day. And it is still not quite clear enough to definitively prove once and for all that His Snakeship, Champ is real.

For those who believe, His Snakeship, Champ, might be a true sea serpent — a long, relatively narrow-bodied marine animal that moves through the water like an enormous snake. Or it might be a marine dinosaur that's somehow managed survive in Lake Champlain's depths for over 10,000 years, like His Snakeship, Champ's Scottish cousin Nessie — a whale-like body, four pairs of flippers, and a long tail and equally long neck.

But whatever it is, what we know for sure is that it's a true Vermonter and we couldn't create a cryptid collection without including His Snakeship, Champ.