Ol' Rip (died January 19, 1929) was a Texas horned lizard⁠—commonly referred to as a "horned toad" or "horny toad"⁠—famous during the Jazz Age which supposedly survived a 31-year hibernation as an entombed animal. The reptile's name was a reference to American writer Washington Irving's fictional character Rip Van Winkle. Following its alleged exhumation from a cornerstone in Eastland, Texas on February 18, 1928, the lizard became a national celebrity and appeared in 1920s motion pictures. The same year, a Texas political delegation led by Senator Earle Mayfield presented the docile lizard to President Calvin Coolidge at the White House for his inspection. As a consequence of the creature's fame, horned toads were sold by the thousands as souvenirs at public events including the 1928 Democratic National Convention. The ensuing mass capture and export of the horned toads resulted in the genus' abrupt decline in West Central Texas and prompted an intervention by the Texas Department of Agriculture. Decades later, the saga of Ol' Rip inspired Looney Tunes scribe Michael Maltese to write a 1955 animated theatrical short entitled One Froggy Evening. In the cartoon, a construction worker demolishing an old building finds an 1897 time capsule inside a cornerstone. The capsule contains a living toad which is able to sing Tin Pan Alley songs such as "Hello! Ma Baby" and "I'm Just Wild About Harry". History Alleged entombment On July 29, 1897, a 4-year-old boy named Will Wood caught a horny toad in Eastland County, Texas. The boy's father, Eastland County clerk Ernest E. Wood, decided to use the reptile to test the West Texas tradition that the creatures could survive for many years in hibernation. The horned lizard was placed in a cornerstone of the Eastland County Courthouse in Eastland, Texas along with other time capsule memorabilia, including a Bible and a bottle of alcohol. Thirty years later during the Jazz Age, construction workers began to tear down the old courthouse, and town officials scheduled a public event to open the time capsule in mid-February 1928. An ambitious young newspaperman named Boyce House reported on the forthcoming ceremony in his articles for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. House particularly emphasized the mystery of the horned toad which supposedly had been entombed in the capsule since 1897. As a result of Boyce's sensationalist newspaper articles, a crowd of 1,500 spectators gathered in Eastland, Texas, to witness the opening of the