The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America (92 page)

Hearing about how President Lincoln had kept a turkey named Jack around the White House after sparing its life one Thanksgiving, the president adopted a one-legged rooster as a favorite pet, prohibiting the cook from even thinking about breaking its neck. Then there was the pet turkey which became friendly with the president’s two parrots.
The Washington Evening Star
reported: “There is no home in Washington so full of pets high and low degree as the White House, and those pets not only occupy the
attention of the children, but the President is himself their good friend, and has a personal interest in every one of them.”
²⁰
As the White House usher Ike Hoover put it, “A nervous person had no business around the White House those days.”
²¹

First Lady Edith Roosevelt tolerated her husband’s obsession with having live animals around him at all times
.
First Lady Edith Roosevelt. (
Courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library
)

The antics of all these White House pets made colorful newspaper copy. Once Algonquin, a spotted pony, was escorted to the second-floor family quarters to boost the morale of nine-year-old Archie, stuck in bed with measles; the disease had swept through Washington like an epidemic.
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Ecstatic to see Algonquin, whom he loved, Archie let out an Indian “whoop” and dived to hug his pet. Algonquin was so startled by Archie’s abrupt gesture that his legs buckled and all 350 pounds of pony slipped and fell to the floor. The loud thud sounded like a muffled gunshot blast. The whole Roosevelt clan rushed into the bedroom deeply concerned. When the president returned from California he mildly reprimanded Archie, saying that such suddenness was unwise when dealing with ponies; they spooked too easily. The comical episode is now remembered as another Roosevelt first—the first time a horse rode in a White House elevator.
²³

Then there was the famous Kansas jackrabbit affair, which rocked Washington. A Topekean had donated to Roosevelt’s White House menagerie two young jackrabbits from his home state. One day while being fed pellets, the rabbits escaped their cage. A wild scramble ensued. The president and his sons chased after them. Escaping from the White House lawn, the rabbits made their way to G Street and Twelfth Avenue, where they parted company, one heading east, the other west. “Newsboys and messenger boys joined in the exciting chase after the rabbits, and for a time business in that vicinity was practically at a standstill,” the
Washington Post
wrote in a long feature story. “Both animals were large specimens, and, as they spread out their long limbs, many thought they were young deer.” After hours of mayhem one rabbit was captured at Turelane and M Street N.W. The other made its way back to the White House as if wanting to be put back into its hutch. Instead, the president decided to let them both live in the White House shrubbery, “wild and free.”
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Roosevelt started tossing carrots to the jackrabbits whenever he wandered the White House grounds to feed nuts to the squirrels. Both T.R. and the grounds policeman, named Mr. Curtis, ensconced in a security booth just east of the White House entrance, used to hand-feed the squirrels. Before long the squirrels were as tame as the Angora house cats. Roosevelt would sit on the grass, and the squirrels would scurry up to him to be fed. The squirrels weren’t even afraid of the Saint Bernard,
named Rolla, or the retriever Sailor Boy. Sometimes 100 squirrels would line the walk heading into the White House, waiting for the president to come out and apparently knowing that he had pocketfuls of nuts.
²⁵

Perhaps the most exotic pet President Roosevelt had was a spotted hyena (
Crocuta crocuta
) named Bill, from the plains of Ethiopia. Eventually, Bill weighed about 150 pounds. He had been given to Roosevelt in March 1904 by Menelik II, emperor of Ethiopia, who claimed to be directly descended from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Menelik had brought with him to America such wildlife as elephants, monkeys, tigers, pythons, and rare birds to donate to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago. But he insisted that Roosevelt keep the hyena pup and a lion cub as personal pets.
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Roosevelt donated the lion cub to the Bronx Zoo, but he kept Bill for a while, teaching it tricks, enjoying its high-pitched cackle, and letting it beg for table scraps.
²⁷

More than anything else, however, it was dog stories that the press loved. Whether it was Sailor Boy the Chesapeake retriever or Jack the terrier, President Roosevelt always seemed to have a canine friend nearby. He could have made a fortune writing stories about the White House dogs (on the order of later books such as
Old Yeller
or
Marley and Me
) for
Outing
. Even during important cabinet meetings about the Panama Canal or the Ottoman empire, Roosevelt would often pat a dog while he spoke. Sometimes he carried lunch scraps in the pocket of his suit coat to feed them as treats. One of his dogs, Pete, a bull terrier, ended up biting so many White House visitors that the president reluctantly exiled him to Oyster Bay. When Ethel’s bull terrier Ace got lost at Sagamore Hill one fall afternoon, a high-profile search was undertaken, as if for a missing person. Eventually the
New York Times
was able to run the headline “Roosevelt Dog Is Found.”
²⁸

Whenever a family pet died, Roosevelt buried it at Sagamore Hill in a special cemetery located north of the house and surrounded by native plants. An inscription on a memorial boulder there read “Faithful Friends.” Each buried pet had its name carved in the stone monument, and there was a bench nearby for the mourners. Little American flags were stuck in the ground, as if it were Arlington National Cemetery. In remembrance of Cuba, the famous dog of the Spanish-American War, the president had his named carved into the rock. Eventually, Roosevelt created an arboretum, arching over the burial site of his animal friends.
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Roosevelt’s idea of heaven was a place where all these pets would come and greet him in a grand reunion.

Between meetings, no matter the weather, President Roosevelt would play fetch on the White House lawn with his dogs.
T.R. with pet dog. (
Courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library
)

II

That spring a debate raged in Washington regarding what to do with Alaska. More than 100 bills concerning Alaska were presented to the Fifty-Eighth Congress. President Roosevelt wanted virtually all of them—particularly those protecting wildlife—passed. The discovery of gold had caused a rush to Alaska; but Roosevelt hoped to impede development by creating reserves for the big game mammals at Fire Island (which he would turn into a federal game preserve in 1909). He insisted emphatically that harvesting Alaskan wildlife must be regulated, and that a smart plan for managing natural resources must be implemented for the vast territory. He also promoted a court system and infrastructure improvements for Juneau, Skagway, Sitka, and other cities. A variety of books on Alaska—notably
Our New Alaska
by Charlie Hallock (printed by
Forest and Steam
), A Summer in Alaska by Frederick Schwatka,
A Trip to Alaska
by George Wardman, and “The Merriam Report” of the Harriman Expedition—had spurred entrepreneurs’ interest in the land once derided as “Seward’s folly.” For the first time Americans were starting to see the acquisition of Alaska for $7.2 million (less than two cents an acre) as a steal. History had vindicated Seward’s judgment as, Roosevelt believed, it would someday vindicate his own attempts to save Alaska’s caribou herds.

Throughout 1904 Roosevelt also grew interested in the brown bears of Alaska, which could be found in every district. He regularly asked for reports from the Boone and Crockett Club about Alaska’s black bears, grizzlies, and glacier (or blue) bears. The polar bear, he learned, was found
only along the coast, in ranges of eternal ice, and never below sixty-one degrees north latitude (and it was found at that latitude only when swept down on Bering Sea ice floes). Merriam reported to Roosevelt about the various sizes of brown bears he saw on the Kodiak Islands during the Harriman expedition of 1899. Roosevelt hatched a plan to take a steamer to Alaska and then hunt with an Aleut guide along the salmon streams of Kodiak in search of a bull bear. He even ordered rubber boots and rainproof slickers in anticipation of the journey. Roosevelt envisioned himself not only killing a bear but writing an article about Alaska for
Scribner’s
magazine. Besides the bears, Roosevelt also wanted the newly discovered types of wild sheep and caribou saved. His administration’s primary conservation policy initiative in Alaska from 1901 to 1904 was enforcing both the Lacey Bird Act and a wild fowl law (enacted June 6, 1900) for protecting eggs.
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In 1902 the Boone and Crockett Club, with Roosevelt’s support, helped Congress pass an act (32 Stat. L. 327) imposing seasonal hunting and bag limits in Alaska. As the Roosevelt administration structured game laws for Alaska, if you wanted to hunt, you needed a permit—issued by the Biological Survey. Only the secretary of agriculture could permit hides, trophies, carcasses, etc. to be shipped out of Alaska. The federal government under Roosevelt was seizing firm control of the last frontier.

President Roosevelt, in particular, was anxious to bring the districts of Alaska—not officially even a territory until 1912—into the American family. But he simply had no patience for dealing with bureaucrats on Capitol Hill who didn’t know rain-fresh ferns from black-green moss. There were individual members of Congress, however, whom he greatly respected. Once again Roosevelt—this time as president—partnered with Congressman John Lacey of Iowa to save Alaskan ecosystems such as Saint Lazaria, the Pribilof Islands, the Yukon delta, and parts along the Bering Sea. Both men wanted the territory’s seal and bird rookeries, forests, and fishing streams properly managed. Roosevelt was counting on Lacey (or “the major,” as he started calling Lacey after the visit to Oskaloosa in 1903) to figure out how to build a railroad through Alaska’s mountain passes while simultaneously protecting the priceless forest reserves. What mattered most to both Roosevelt and Lacey (now being called by the Boone and Crockett Club the “father of federal game protection”) was that the incomparable wildlife of Alaska not be molested or its scenic wonders destroyed by reckless industrial capitalism. No American knew more about the dual issues of wildlife protection–forest conservation law and railroad law than Lacey—the author of both
Lacey’s Railway
Digest
and the pro-bird Lacey Act of 1900.
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“Cannot we get the Alaska legislation through?” Roosevelt pleaded with Lacey. “It does seem to me to be very important that this republican Congress show its genuine care for the welfare of Alaska.”
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An uproar ensued throughout Alaska against the president’s tough federal game laws in 1904. A grassroots movement in Juneau sought to repeal 32 Stat. L. 327, and its voice was heard in Congress. Charging that the laws promulgated by the Boone and Crockett Club and the Roosevelt administration favored rich sportsmen from the continental United States who wanted to bag a moose in the Kenai Peninsula, Alaskans flouted the game laws, risking arrest. How dare these elitists flood into Alaska with a perfume-scented permission slip from Secretary Wilson while blue-collar hunters who actually lived in the Brooks Range or the Kenai Peninsula were being rejected by the USDA. The rallying cry of Alaska’s pioneers was “home rule.” To mitigate, if only slightly, the discord between advocates of conservation and development, the Roosevelt administration was forced to concede to the territory’s governor the right to issue permits. But capitulation went only so far. Roosevelt remained vigilant in maintaining federal control of the hunting of fur-bearing animals like seal and fox: USDA managed all fur-bearing land animals while the new Department of Commerce and Labor oversaw seals and walruses.
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And Roosevelt began developing a strategy to save birds in Alaska just as he had done in Florida, North Dakota, Michigan, and Oregon.