As far as jackrabbits go, eight feet is pretty big to say the least. Don’t worry though, I’m not talking about some gargantuan mutant from the deepest, farthest reaches of cult cinema, I’m actually talking about Jack Ben Rabbit, the giant jack rabbit sculpture of Odessa, Texas. Jack Ben Rabbit was lovingly named after John Ben Shepperd, the president of the Odessa Chamber of Commerce that came up with the idea to build the statue in 1962 as a way to pay tribute to Odessa’s jackrabbit roping competition, an event held annually at the Odessa Rodeo.
While the roping competition ended in 1978 after The Humane Society blocked all future events, Jack Ben stayed where he was for years at the Old Prairie Pete Park until he was moved to a maintenance yard for storage, but community pressure saw his release and return to public life in a new location in front of the downtown Ector County Independent School District Administration Building. After an attempted theft in 1997 the city bolted Jack in place to make sure he wasn’t ever going to leave his spot again.
In 2005 the city of Odessa held a “hare-raising” event as a joint project sponsored by several local art and civic organizations. Together with the support of local businesses they raised enough money to purchase thirty-seven smaller jackrabbit statues all to be painted by different artists and spread throughout the city to benefit future public art projects. Most of the new jackrabbit statues were decorated to match the businesses that funded them and many of them are placed outside of those businesses with locations subject to change.
Jack Ben Rabbit initially cost $2,300 to make and was constructed out of fiberglass. In Currently he is flanked by several Texas Historical markers, one of them states:
“THE JACKRABBIT
True plains Rabbit. Lives only in the west. Burro-like ears gave him his name. Color is protective, blending with sand and dry grass. Very long legs make him a swift runner, clocked at speeds to 45 miles an hour. Object of hunts with Greyhounds.
Was prized by plains Indians for food and fur. To white man a reminder of desert-hard life. In drouth and depression, meat source for thousands.
Subject of tall tales. Actual hero of world’s only Jackrabbit Rodeo, in Odessa, May 1932.”
There is another marker that includes a recipe for Jackrabbit and Dumplings.