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Jack Rabbit
Also called: Prairie Hare, Jackass Hare, White-tailed Jack Rabbit.
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Length.—25 inches.
Description.—Larger than any of the preceding, with very long hind legs and ears. Colour above yellowish gray, sides and back of neck lighter, below white, tail entirely white. In the northern part of its range it turns pure white in winter, farther south the change is partial or possibly does not occur at all.
Range.—From Western Minnesota and Iowa to the Sierra Nevada Mountains and from Central Kansas and Colorado to the Saskatchewan plains. Represented southward and westward by a group of allied species known as black-tailed jack rabbits.
Cottontails of one form or another stretch all across our Continent and varying hares occur Westward in the boreal forests just as they do in the East, but the distinctively Western member of the hare tribe is the jack rabbit. From the Eastern border of the plains to the shores of the Pacific there is scarcely any spot where one form or another of the jack rabbit does not occur, but farther East it is unknown. The white-tailed jack rabbit is the one found on the Great Plains and upper part of the Great Basin. Southward and partly overlapping is the range of the Texan or black-tailed jack rabbit while in California is found still another species.
Living entirely in the open, jack rabbits are more than ever dependent upon the protective colouration, speed and delicacy of hearing which are so characteristic of the whole tribe. Dr. Coues says, "The first sign one has usually of a hare which has squatted low in hopes of concealment, till its fears force it to fly, is a great bound into the air with lengthened body and erect ears. The instant it touches the ground it is up again, it does not come fairly down and gather itself for the next spring but seems to hold its legs stiffly extended, touch only its toes and rebound by the force of its impact. As it gains on its pursuers, and its fears subside, the springs grow weaker, and finally the animal squats in its tracks on its haunches with a jerk, to look and listen. One fore foot is advanced a little before the other, and the ears are held pointing in opposite directions. The attitude at such times is highly characteristic."
For its home the jack rabbit has only an open "form" beneath a bush or clump of weeds; here it sleeps in sunshine and storm always on the alert for danger, ready to dash away on the instant. When the "rabbit brush" grows thick they are comparatively safe and well sheltered, but in certain bare stretches of unbroken waste land they have to seek shelter as best they may, crouching beside some white wind-bleached stalk or in the shadow of a telegraph pole. The northern species turns white in winter and so escapes observation on the snow.
The young, from one to six in number, are brought forth in the form, which is simply a little space among the weeds and bushes where the grass, when there is any, has been trampled flat and perhaps slightly carpeted with loose fur.
The time of birth varies from late winter to early summer according to latitude, in the North, where only one or two litters are born each season, June is about as early as the young ones ever make their appearance.
When first born they are well furred and have their eyes open, by the time they are a week old they are active and pretty well able to look out for their own safety, and at the end of a month or two are weaned and may leave their parents and start out to get a living for themselves.
They feed on buffalo grass and weeds of various sorts and the leaves and bark of shrubs and low bushes. In the South where grease-wood and cactus are abundant they fare well; and wherever men cultivate the land, the jack rabbits make themselves at home at once and stuff on garden vegetables, alfalfa and the bark of young orchard trees and so get themselves disliked.
In a natural state their numbers are apparently held in check more by scarcity of forage than by the inroads of their enemies, and just as soon as cultivation yields them abundant fodder, they increase to an alarming extent, in spite of the farmers' efforts to destroy them.
The eagle, the Western red-tailed hawk, the prairie falcon and the marsh hawk occasionally kill jack rabbits, especially the young ones, but their most destructive foes, next to man, are the wolves and foxes. The coyote is particularly successful in hunting them, and near the border of the woods the gray fox and bob-cat kill them in considerable numbers.