From Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children:
12. PRESIDENTIAL NURSE FOR GUINEA PIGS
(To Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward)
White House, Oct. 20, 1902.
At this moment, my small daughter being out, I am acting as nurse to two wee guinea pigs, which she feels would not be safe save in the room with me—and if I can prevent it I do not intend to have wanton suffering inflicted on any creature.
Please enjoy this weekend while picturing Teddy Roosevelt clutching two guinea pigs to his chest and whispering “Bully” soothingly to them.
He only left them alive because they were too small to mount as trophies in any satisfying way.
cackling like a lunatic in my office at this comment.
Mental image of TR looking consideringly at the pigs, then at his wall, squinting as he imagines what their heads would look like… then shaking his head and sighing in disappointment. “Nothing else for it, I’ll have to care for them after all.”
Shhhhh, bully, shhhhh. It’s alright, you two. She’ll be back soon. Shhhhh.
As his daughter Alice (a total badass and my personal hero) said, “[Teddy] wants to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening.” And the responsible caretaker of every guinea pig, apparently.
I’m trying to find a speech by good old TR as we speak.
He is my dad’s favorite president, and the only subject on who my dad reads books, and if someone wants to draw TR holding some guinea pigs I’ll have a father’s day card I can use for eternity
Seconded.
Nominating Kate Beaton.
This has not quite replaced his rescue of a kitten (while ‘marching to church’) as my favorite TR Helps Animals story, but it’s a close thing.
I can only picture him holding said kitten tucked in his arm, while still approaching the church at full marching speed.
This is the most delightful image.
Being unfamiliar with this particular story I looked it up, and am leaving it here for anyone similarly ill-informed, because it is rather wonderful.
“To-day as I was marching to church, with Sloan some twenty-five yards behind, I suddenly saw two terriers racing to attack a kitten which was walking down the sidewalk. I bounced forward with my umbrella, and after some active work put to flight the dogs while Sloan captured the kitten, which was a friendly, helpless little thing, evidently too well accustomed to being taken care of to know how to shift for itself. I inquired of all the bystanders and of people on the neighboring porches to know if they knew who owned it; but as they all disclaimed, with many grins, any knowledge of it, I marched ahead with it in my arms for about a half a block. Then I saw a very nice colored woman and little colored girl looking out of the window of a small house with on the door a dressmaker’s advertisement, and I turned and walked up the steps and asked them if they did not want the kitten. They said they did, and the little girl welcomed it lovingly; so I felt I had gotten it a home and continued to church.”
HE BOUNCED FORWARD WITH HIS UMBRELLA, OH MY GOSH
You know he joyfully embraced the opportunity for “active work” fighting off a couple dogs on his way to church. A day is incomplete for Teddy Roosevelt without such “active work.”
That is such a lovely story from beginning to end.
I’m not sure who looks at a guy whose life mission was to shoot and stuff every living thing on god’s green earth and thinks “yes this is definitely who I want looking after the well-being of two small, helpless herbivores.” Even a little kid should know this is inviting a cat amongst the pigeons. The phrase might as well be “inviting a TR amongst the guinea pigs” for heaven’s sake.
Aw c’mon, there was a code about the animals you do and do not kill and TR was a strict adherent. That’s the whole reason there is such a thing as teddy bears. Small helpless captive animals are not fair game.
Wikipedia’s grand roll of presidential pets lists five guinea pigs in the Roosevelt household—Admiral Dewey, Bishop Doane, Dr. Johnson, Father O’Grady, and Fighting Bob Evans. I wonder which two Teddy was cuddling that day?
(The Roosevelts kept 31 pets, including a garter snake named Emily Spinach, a hen named Baron Spreckle, a Chesapeake Bay Retriever called Sailor Boy, and a hyena whose name has been lost to history.)
The Roosevelts really brought their A game for pet names, didn’t they?
God, I hope it was Admiral Dewey and Father O’Grady. I can’t even imagine an alternative pairing.
Those are absolutely the best names for guinea pigs I have ever heard in my life.
Also, bravo to Emily Spinach the garter snake.
Apparently Alice Roosevelt chose the name “because it was as green as spinach and as thin as my Aunt Emily.”
Alice is my faaaave.
Now that I’ve learned she came up with, “If you haven’t got anything good to say about anybody, come sit next to me,” I think she might be mine too. Extra points for not letting Joe McCarthy call her by her first name and wearing a big hat so LBJ couldn’t kiss her.
Oh, good ol’ Lost To History. You were the most beloved of them all.
i laughed so hard at this my glasses fell off.
i really want to name a pet Lost To History now, darn it.
And I just laughed so hard I lost what I was eating.
I feel like I’m going to write “Theodore Roosevelt had five guinea pigs named Admiral Dewey, Bishop Doane, Dr. Johnson, Father O’Grady, and Fighting Bob Evans” on a post-it note and stick it above my desk to get me through those days when you wonder what the point of anything is.
I just did!
Dewey was an admiral at Manila Bay,
Dewey was a morning in the month of May,
Dewey was a guinea pig, one of Teddy’s two;
Dewey love our guinea pigs? I should say we dew!
I love this. Did you make this?
Alas no, it is based on a children’s rhyme, which I associate with jumping rope, but which Google identifies as a “camping song.” No idea what the tune is supposed to be, probably something by Beyoncé or Justin Bieber– suggestions are welcome. The kids these days, they are all about the Spanish-American War. I just tweaked the rhyme a bit to make it more guinea pig-specific.
I like that Wiki makes a point of specifying that Andrew Jackson’s parrot was taught to swear.
The stories of that are hilarious. Betsy Phillips has written about it at Pith on the Wind more than once. It was a scandalous parrot.
My fave story about TR’s pets is that when one of his children was sick (can’t remember which one) and sad about not being able to go ride his horse, the other kids remedied this by bringing the horse into the White House.
That anecdote was in a book I had as a kid! If memory serves, Quentin was the sick child, and the horse got to ride up in the elevator!
I’m sure the horse was completely thrilled with this.
PRESIDENTIAL GODDAMN HYENA.
And it’s like, not even a thing in the eyes of history. So trivial a detail that the hyena’s name is forgotten. (THE WHITE HOUSE HYENA.) Any other president, the day they brought a hyena into the White House, that would be the day that everyone said, “Today the President has gone full screaming nutburgers.” But with Teddy Roosevelt? SHRUG. That’s just what he does, you know?
“Oh yas, the hyena, she’s somewhere around. Not a favorite, I’m afraid. Always rubbing that sausagelike pseudophallic clitoris on the furniture. If she tries to drag you away and devour you alive, just swat her on the nose. Honestly, I’d get rid of her in a heartbeat if it weren’t for the children. Blasted creature ate my favorite Cape Buffalo skull, just chewed it up and swallowed it, then left horrible bone-dust droppings all through the West Wing. Edith was furious, let me tell you.”
I am in love with that Wikipedia list and revisit it every month or two to remind myself that, among many other things, the White House at one point housed two lion cubs named Tax Reduction and Budget Bureau. Also two anonymous alligators.
All Woodrow Wilson had was a sheep named Ike.
I like Ike.
Retro Dad Magazine Cover: T.R. with Guinea Pigs
T.R. was the ultimate dad, so a whole issue devoted to him would be super appropriate
Awwww!!!! <3 <3 <3 <3
This is marvelous, but also it reminded me that DIRTBAG TEDDY ROOSEVELT is a top-ten all-time Toast Great Post and I just got to read it and FORSOOTH
I love this site and that series so much I never want to pick a favorite, but that post has led me & my BFF Honest to speak to each other as Quiet Dignity Taft and Dirtbag TR respectively for over a year, and it brings me endless joy that we do this.
I just went back and read that post, and saw you mention this. Vim & vigor!
I love that gif.
I am just realising I must have seen this gif before, because it is exactly my mental picture of the above-mentioned kitten-rescuing “while marching off to church”, the books in his hand replaced by a small tiger tabby.
What makes today Teddy Roosevelt Friday?
(I am currently wearing a Washington Nationals hoodie with “Teddy 26” printed on the back, so if there is some serendipitous timing there I’m excited)
Idk but can we have more TR Fridays I like them.
Teddy Roosevelt makes it TR Friday. He actually just makes days his own wherever he goes, even if everybody else already had plans.
preciselyyyyy
Today was actually supposed to be Huge Wheel of Cheese Day, but Teddy Roosevelt said nuts to that and so we learned about his daughter’s guinea pigs instead.
OH MY GOD. As a proud daughter of Oyster Bay, and a proud guinea piglet owner, I am absolutely dying of the squee over here. (His home, Sagamore Hill, is an absolutely lovely national historic site, has a beautiful beach to walk one’s dog on, and is the only damn park I could find anywhere near my town that did not prohibit dogs. Presumably because if they tried to ban dogs, they might as well ban children, because Teddy would be haunting them *really vigorously* until they cut that shit out.)
I love guinea pigs so much I will treasure this image forever
TR is my favorite president, current one excluded, and this just makes me love him even more.
(is it inappropriate to proclaim that he can get it?)
He could get it. Look at that pack of kids.
TR was also an awesome pillow fighter: http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/mobile/index.html?…
My high school U.S. History teacher actually came in AS Teddy Roosevelt when we studied him. It was a high point in a class with a man who’d made a career of doing as little work outside of his classroom as possible. (He used to have us underline the important points in our writing AND made us circle every 25th word, so he didn’t have to check our word counts or read more than necessary.)
I used to hate having teachers like that but I know if I ever taught, I would be exactly like this.
If they turn it on online, MS Word counts the words for you, and also marks all the grammatical errors.
If he hasn’t retired, that’s probably EXACTLY what he’s having them do now….