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August 25, 2010
Wow, Stately and Remix sure enjoyed last week’s blog about the birds that have called the White House home. Although they know that there have been plenty of dogs, cats and horses who served as First Pets, this week they wanted me to talk about the weirdest and scariest animals to have lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And you know I can’t say no to them.
WHITE HOUSE GONE WILD
It’s hard to believe, but it wasn’t until 1901 that the press started writing much about “First Families,” including the First Pets. Maybe that’s because the President at that time, Teddy Roosevelt (for whom the teddy bear is named) kept a lion, a hyena, a wildcat, a coyote, five bears, a zebra, a barn owl, lizards, rats, roosters, a raccoon, and three snakes. (His son Quentin once dropped the snakes in his father’s lap while the President was meeting with the Attorney General. Rather than get mad, Mr. Roosevelt suggested that Quentin take the snakes into the next room where some Congressmen were waiting – to keep them from getting bored.)
This famous political cartoon shows
Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear cub,
which is how toy bears got the nickname
"Teddy."
But Teddy Roosevelt certainly wasn’t the first president to keep wild animals – not by a long shot. That habit started all the way back with our sixth president, John Quincy Adams.
All About Alligators
Maybe he felt the president needed better protection in the days before the Secret Service. Maybe he thought the Commander in Chief needed more teeth. Whatever the reason, in 1826 the Marquis de LaFayette gave President John Quincy Adams a pet alligator. Rather than give it to a zoo, Adams kept it in a bathtub in the East Wing of the White House, and is said to have told people that he enjoyed “the spectacle of guests fleeing from the room in terror.”
Meanwhile, First Lady Louisa Adams kept silkworms, which have to be the least scary pets around. We’re not sure if she liked to pet them or let them sit in her lap, but she did use their silk in the clothes she wore.
Learn to Raise Silkworms
The only other giant reptiles to serve as presidential pets belonged to Herbert Hoover’s son, Allan Henry, who would sometimes let his pair of alligators roam the White House grounds!
Did you know that James Buchanan was the only president who was never married? Some people were worried about him being lonely in the White House, so they sent him two bald eagles, as well as a pet dog. Many people believe that Buchanan also owned an elephant, or even a herd of elephants, sent to him by the King of Siam, but that’s not actually true. Stately has asked that we set this record straight, once and for all.
Many movies and musicals have been
written about the King of Siam
If you’ve ever seen the musical “The Kind and I” or the movie “Anna and the King,” you know about King Mongkut of Siam. He was a very famous monarch of what is now Thailand, known for embracing Western culture, improving women’s rights and modernizing his country. Well, when the King of Siam heard that America had no wild elephants outside of the circus, he wrote a letter to President Buchanan offering to send him several pairs, thinking they could be allowed to wander through all the parts of the country that hadn’t been settled yet, where they would happily start elephant families. By the time the letter reached America (in the days before texting, email, telephones, or even airplanes, remember) James Buchanan wasn’t president anymore. Abraham Lincoln was. Mr. Lincoln politely declined the elephants, explaining that the climate and geography in America wouldn’t make the animals very happy after all.
Elephants are amazing animals.
Click here to learn more about them.
Other presidents did accept wild animals as gifts, however, like Martin Van Buren, who received two tiger cubs from the Sultan of Oman. He kept them in the White House for a couple of months before Congress made him give them to a zoo.
In 1960, the very first white tiger ever to come to the United States was given to President Dwight D. Eisenhower by The Metropolitan Broadcasting Corporation. The blue-eyed beauty was named Mohini of Rewa, and she went to a zoo right away.
The White Tiger, Mohini of Rewa
We talked last week about Calvin Coolidge’s birds, but he also had quite a collection of exotic animals, many of which were given to him as gifts. One was a pygmy hippo named Billy, given to him by Harvey Firestone, who owned of a big tire company. The hippo eventually went to live at the National Zoo, where it became a daddy hippo 23 times! In fact, if you see a pygmy hippo in any zoo today, there’s a good chance it’s related to Billy, the hippo Calvin Coolidge used to own.
Most Pygmy hippos are related to Billy
President Coolidge also received a bear, a wallaby, a bobcat named Smokey, and two raccoons named Rebecca and Horace and two lion cubs named Tax Reduction and Budget Bureau. When it comes to fun names for fun pets though, we’re back to Teddy Roosevelt. In addition to a black bear named Jonathan Edwards, his kids had four guinea pigs, named: Dr. Johnson, Bishop Doane, Fighting Bob Evans, and Father O’Grady. Second place goes to President Benjamin Harrison, who had opossums named Mr. Reciprocity and Mr. Protection.
Learn more about Opossums
These days, it is not considered a very good idea to keep a wild animal as a pet. In fact, it’s against the law in 14 states. That’s because it’s not usually healthy or safe for either the people or the pets. If you would like to read more about why you should think twice before keeping that tiger cub that followed you home, click here.
Be sure come back next week, when we talk about the cows, goats, sheep and horses that have clopped their way into our presidents’ hearts.
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