Jaci Dawn

I have this little project I’m working on that involves drawing a chicken. The chicken lives in the 1930’s. I’ve been searching the all-wise Internet for photos of chickens that are suitable for the project (which I can’t really tell you about, so you have to forgive me on the secrecy thing).

I’m doing a lot of pen-and-ink sketching.

But that isn’t what this post is about. What this post is about is one of my favorite bizarre subjects: weird creatures. You know, things like the chupacabra and Sasquatch. Cryptids.

I haven’t blogged about Big Foot in awhile because there haven’t been any credible sightings of late and the last chupacabra sighting that I followed turned out to be a raccoon with a serious case of mange.

But in my quest to find 1930’s scenes that include chickens, I did a Google search tonight. I tried 1930’s chicken coops (that brings up a whole lot of links to the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders which were the factual basis for the 2008 fictional movie “The Changeling” ) and 1930’s hen houses.

1930’s hen houses links to a lot of hen houses, but it also links to a lot of strange animals. There’s a cryptid in China that looks strangely similar to the mangy raccoon of Kentucky.

And check this out: the quagga.  It’s an extinct sub-species of the Plains Zebra. It was not a cross between a zebra and anything else: it was a bonafide creature that existed into the 1870’s. A very cool extinct creature.

I thought the chupacabra was scary, but get a load of this: the Thylacine or Tiger-Wolf of Tasmania. YIKES!

It was (or possibly is) an efficient killing marsupial. yes, I wrote marsupial. You know: like a kangaroo or an opossum? It had a pouch where it kept it’s babies until they were large enough to run on their own.

The last known Tasmanian Tiger-wolf was killed by a hapless farmer (Wilf Batty) who was just trying to protect his chickens (hence the reason this comes up under the tag “hen house”). Can you imagine the notoriety gained by that poor man when he killed the last known creature of an entire species? Lucky for him, it was in the 1930’s and the animal rights folks didn’t come looking for him in the cover of night.

Unlucky for the rest of the world, he shot and killed the last known wild Thylacine.

Or maybe he didn’t. I don’t know. It could be out there, running with the mangy raccoons, the chupacabra and Sasquatch. Check out the YouTube videos:

What do you think? My bet is on the Thylacine.

The things you learn when you aren’t even looking to learn them. God bless the Internet. I’d never have learned this stuff by looking in Encyclopedia Britannica under “Hen Houses”.

(PS – extra points if you “got” the post title: “Lions! Tigers! Bears! oh My!)