THE TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL — MAY 23, 1901
A Sheridan County Man Has One to Sell.
A Sheridan county man is proud over the capture of a horned rabbit. W. H. Conard, of Studley, is the trapper and owner of the freak cottontail. He caught it last Saturday and sat right down and wrote offering it to the state museum.
“Mr. State Museum Manager,” he wrote, “I have caught a rabbit today of the cottontail species that has an actual horn growing at the butt of the left ear. The horn is three inches long and two inches in circumference. What is your best offer for it? Reply at once if you want it.”
The state museum manager has no contingent fund with which to buy freak cottontail rabbits so the exhibits will not be enriched by the addition of the horned rabbit. Besides the animal is alive and its existence among all the stuffed animals in the collection with no appropriation available for rabbit food would be exceedingly precarious.
The state zoologist, who does not have an office in the state house, and is never in, said, when found, that he could not account for the freak of nature. He had a suspicion that the horned rabbit was a cross between a Belgian hare and a Welsh rabbit, but that he could not tell accurately until he heard him talk, took phonographic records and analyzed his brogue.
Bowersock’s hornless catfish will have to look to their laurels. The Sheridan county horned rabbit is the wonder of the day.
From— The Topeka State Journal. (Topeka, Kan.), 23 May 1901. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
