Josiah Off To The Bronx Zoo
The picture to the right is the only known photograph of TR holding Josiah. He was just two weeks old when Pearl Gorsuch gave him the baby badger. He wound up with Archie most of the time and while he had to be kept in a cage he was taken out and let loose to terrorize the White House staff.
In Ethel’s journal she wrote, “Josiah likes to shred the furniture.” Over that summer at Sagamore Hill Josiah grew bigger and got meaner. His bites became more menacing.”
TR was sure he’d eventually wind up seriously attacking one of the children, or polish off one of the other family pets. It was time for Josiah to go.
Roosevelt contacted his good friend William Hornaday Director of the Bronx Zoo. Hornaday was also a member of TR's Boone and Crockett Club and had written more books on conservation than TR. Two years earlier when Roosevelt was governor the Bronx Zoo made room for Jonathan Edwards a bear TR had gotten as a gift from a supporter in West Virginia.
Roosevelt was glad to hear they'd do the same for Josiah. While on their way back to Washington after a summer in Oyster Bay TR's Secretary William Loeb Jr. made arrangements for Pearl Gorsuch's badger to go to the Bronx Zoo.
Josiah boarded the presidential train on Monday September 28th, 1903 and met an employee of the Bronx Zoo in Long Island City at 9:15am. He was taken to the zoo where he spent the rest of his life. When he died he was returned to Sagamore Hill where he is buried in the “Pet Cemetery.”
