Wonderland 2024

C-1. Curious and Curiouser

PROMPT ▼

History can be boring. So, it’s up to you to spice things up for us. Pick any person in history. Write up a short story about this person with titles as ridiculous as “Ghengis Khan Gets a New Haircut”. In other words, make it fun! (<1000 words)

Teddy Roosevelt's Eminently Quotable Hunting Trip


The Roosevelt Museum of Natural History1 was complete, having been assembled from old boxes, leftover construction materials, and some other odds and ends collected from around the neighborhood. The only thing it was missing were the actual exhibits. Teddy had the seal head that he got at the market and had semi-successfully preserved using his basic taxidermy skills, of course, but he now found himself in need of more. After all, a single exhibit does not a museum make.

He and his cousins decided to search the neighborhood for other additions to their museum, but other than rats, feral cats, and the occasional stray dog, there weren't a lot of dead animals to be found just laying around the back alleys of New York City. Plus, if one didn't find specimens quickly after they expired, it made the taxidermy efforts all the more difficult and unimpressive. So when Teddy's father Thee (Theodore Sr.) offered to take him and his cousins upstate on a hunting trip to find some game that they could bring home for their museum, they jumped at the opportunity.


When they had reached the wilderness of the Hudson Valley, Thee provided each of them with small-caliber rifles and provided pointers about the best spots to wait for game.

"I'm bored!" One of the cousins lamented after less than ten minutes of waiting around.

"Shh," Thee replied, hushing him. "Speak softly. If you're too loud, you'll scare off your quarry."

An hour later, Teddy has successfully bagged himself a rabbit and Thee had managed to get himself a white-tailed deer. As they approached the carcasses, Teddy noticed that his father carried a large club with him. It looked like an old axe handle.

"Why are you carrying that?" Teddy asked him.

"Always carry a big stick, son. You never know when you're going to have to fend other scavengers off from your kill."

Thee showed Teddy how to properly clean the kills so that they could be properly prepared for Teddy's taxidermy efforts back in the city. Teddy and his father treasured these moments together, where Thee could indulge his son Teddy in his interests and help mold him into the man he hoped he would eventually become. Thee couldn't help but admire his son's intense focus and excitement for his endeavors. In their Manhattan neighborhood, other kids who were interested in animals collected butterflies or took up birdwatching. The kind of man who made a difference in the world was the kind of man who saw conventional solutions as beneath him and instead built himself a natural history museum to fully explore his passions and interests.

"Teddy, I can already tell that you will go far2 in this world."

"Thanks, pop. I intend to."


______________________________

(457 words)

Footnotes
1  Teddy Roosevelt's lifelong interest in zoology began at age seven when he saw a dead seal at a local market. He and his cousins formed "The Roosevelt Museum of Natural History" and filled it with animals that he killed (and practiced rudimentary taxidermy on) or caught.

2  Teddy Roosevelt's famous quote, "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far" was first included in a letter he wrote on January 26, 1900 where he indicated that it was one of his favorite West African proverbs. He later used it again during a public address at the Minnesota State Fair on September 2, 1901 after being elected Vice President, and he again made reference to it as an "old proverb." Interestingly, though, scholars have yet to be able to trace it to any specific proverb and have concluded it's entirely possible that Roosevelt made it up himself, both the phrase itself and the attribution.