S6E8 The Skewered Jackalope Caper

Welcome to Mysteries to Die For.I am TG Wolff and am here with Jack, my piano player and producer. This is a podcast where we combine storytelling with original music to put you in the heart of a mystery. All stories are structured to challenge you to beat the detective to the solution. These are arrangements, which means instead of word-for-word readings, you get a performance meant to be heard. Jack and I perform these live, front to back, no breaks, no fakes, no retakes.For Season 6, Jack and I are ad-free. I do this because I love mysteries, Jack does it because he loves me. Jack maybe a starving college student but it’s because… We do ask you support the writers of our show. This week it’s me, TG Wolff. Check me out on my website and social, buy and read my stories, help other readers find me. In your review, brag about being a true connoisseur of the mystery genre. This is Season 6, Things that Go Jack in the Night. This season contains truly imaginative mysteries around one of the most common words in the English language. From the brandy distilled from hard cider known as applejack to that nefarious one-eyed jack, to the animals, vegetables, fruits, tools, weapons, and slang, the way the word “jack” is used in the English language is truly unique, inventive, and too numerous for us to count. And yes, it is also the name of my piano player and producer. For Episode 8, that mythical creature the jackalope is the featured jack. This is The Skewered Jackalope Caper by TG WolffAbout JackalopesThe jackalope is a mythical animal of North American folklore described as a jackrabbit with antelope horns. Many jackalope taxidermy mounts, including the original, are made with deer antlers.The underlying legend of the jackalope related to tales of horned hares, which inspired by sightings of rabbits infected with the Shope papilloma virus. It causes horn- and antler-like tumors to grow in various places on a rabbit's head and body. Jackalope are part of a group of tall tale animals, known as fearsome critters, that have become part North American culture since the turn of the twentieth century. Other beasts include hodags, giant snakes, and fur-bearing trout.In the 1930s, Douglas Herrick and his brother popularized the American jackalope by grafting deer antlers onto a jackrabbit carcass and selling the combination to a local hotel in Douglas, Wyoming. They kept going, making and selling jackalopes to a retail outlet in South Dakota. Other taxidermist continues to manufacture the horned rabbits in the 21st century. Stuffed and mounted, jackalopes are found in many bars and other places in the United States. The jackalope has appeared in published stories, poems, television shows, video games, and a low-budget mockumentary film. And now its appeared in a podcast.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JackalopeAbout Sam SpadeSam Spade is a fictional private detective, not of my making but of the Dashiell Hammett. He first appeared in the 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon. He is blond, well-built, and mischievous and is the headliner in four other Hammett short stories. At the time, Spade was genre breaking and became the model that inspired other great PI writers. Hammett said “He is a dream man in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been and in their cockier moments thought they approached.” Spade and the Maltese Falcon has been made into films several times, Humphrey Bogart was the 3rd and best known. I met Sam Spade first reading the Maltese Falcon and then listening to the Adventures of Sam Spade on the podcast The Great Detectives of Old Time Radio. The radio show ran 1946-1951 and starred Howard Duff (later Steve Dunne) as Sam. Duff’s voice will forever be Sam’s to me and I wish you all could have heard it here. My voice definitely isn’t sharp enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Spadehttps://www.greatdetectives.net/detectives/sam-spade/ABOUT TG WolffLike you, I’m not one thing. I’m a writer, an engineer, a wife, and a mother. What is first on the list depends on the day. Beyond the title I claim, I’m a person who loves learning and thoroughly enjoys a good puzzle, is creative and gets bored easily. I hold a BS in Civil Engineering from Case Western Reserve University and an MS in Civil Engineering from Cleveland State University, which gives me absolutely no background in writing, but I do it anyway. Writing mysteries and engineering isn’t as different as you’d think. Both require using logic and process to get from a starting problem to a solution.A special thank you to Ed Teja whose work edited this episode made it better.Find me at www.tgwolff.comWRAP UPThat wraps this episode of Mysteries to Die For. Please do support our show by subscribing, telling a mystery lover about us, and giving us a five-star review. Check out our website www.TGWolff.com/Podcast for links to this season’s authors.Mysteries to Die For is hosted by TG Wolff and Jack Wolff. The Skewered Jackalope Caper was written by TG Wolff. Music and production are by Jack Wolff. Episode art is by TG Wolff. Join us next week for a Toe Tag – that is the first chapter of a fresh release in the mystery, thriller, or crime genre. Then be back in two weeks for episode 9 The Odd Return of Jack…in the Box by Susan Wingate.