| Theodore Roosevelt is one of the best-known and | | | | about its body in a journal. He later convinced the |
| admired Presidents in American history: his exploits as | | | | shopkeeper to give him the seal's skull, and it became |
| an outdoorsman in the West, his charge up San Juan | | | | the first exhibit in what he and two cousins called the |
| Hill in the Spanish American War, and his no-nonsense | | | | Roosevelt Museum of Natural History. |
| approach to international politics all come to mind as | | | | His interest in the field never flagged. By the time he |
| examples of the completeness of the man. What | | | | was thirteen, he was cataloging local birds by their |
| many people don't know about "Teddy" (he despised | | | | scientific names and taking lessons in taxidermy from |
| the nickname) is that he was also an accomplished | | | | an associate of John James Audubon. When he |
| naturalist and taxidermist. | | | | embarked on a trip to Europe and North Africa with |
| In stark contrast to his later reputation as a tireless | | | | his family, he took preprinted labels for a specimen |
| man of the outdoors who seemed ready to explode | | | | collection, and bought taxidermy supplies in Liverpool. |
| with unconstrained energy, Theodore Roosevelt was | | | | So obsessed was he with this pursuit that his sister |
| actually a sickly, weak child with heart and respiratory | | | | complained, "When he does come into the room, you |
| problems. Few expected him to live beyond the age | | | | always hear the words 'bird' and 'skin.'" |
| of four. Seeking to protect him from asthma attacks | | | | As he entered Harvard and began formal training for |
| and other maladies, his family sheltered him and | | | | what looked to be a promising career as a natural |
| encouraged him to take up academic pursuits. He and | | | | historian, he continued his own independent work in the |
| his father soon agreed that the more likely road to | | | | field. At the age of eighteen, he published his first book, |
| recovery was the opposite approach of a rigorous | | | | The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks. According to |
| physical fitness program, but the intellectual die was | | | | historian Paul Cutright, he was regarded at this young |
| cast; from age four, Theodore was a voracious | | | | age as "a very promising taxidermist" and was even |
| reader, and one of his favorite subjects was the | | | | listed in a national directory of biologists. |
| animal kingdom. | | | | Within two years, due to several factors --the untimely |
| As he grew older and more robust, he augmented his | | | | death of his father, his courtship of his future wife, and |
| prodigious reading with outdoor adventures at the | | | | an awakening interest in politics-- Theodore turned |
| family's summer home. His playmates noticed that | | | | away from naturalism and taxidermy as a career. He |
| while they all ran about the woods, he was seriously | | | | never lost his love of the field, however; he remained |
| studying the birds of the area. When he was seven, | | | | an avid hunter and collector of specimens, and his last |
| he came across a dead seal on display at a farmer's | | | | trip abroad, to South America in 1913, was in |
| market in his New York City neighborhood, and his first | | | | association with the American Museum of Natural |
| instinct was to measure it and record observations | | | | History. |