Thread by @therecount

A live look at Champ and Major at the White House.

Legend has it John Quincy Adams had a pet alligator that he kept in the East Room. The gator had its own bathtub and all.

Sadly, White House historians can’t verify this claim, but you can buy a toy alligator for $15 on the Mount Vernon website. shops.mountvernon.org/products/john-…

Teddy Roosevelt and his family had a wide assortment of pets, including a bear named Jonathan Edwards, five guinea pigs, a pet snake named Emily Spinach, a hyena, Josiah the badger, Maude the pig, and their beloved pony Algonquin.

Here’s Quentin Roosevelt on Algonquin in 1902.

Calvin Coolidge collected a menagerie of animals that rivaled most zoos: birds, bobcats, a donkey, a wallaby, 2 lion cubs, and a 600-pound pygmy hippo named Billy.

Billy was gifted to the president in 1927 by tire mogul Harvey Firestone and later donated to the Smithsonian Zoo.

First Lady Grace Coolidge also had a pet raccoon named Rebecca.

Rebecca was supposed to be part of the White House Thanksgiving meal in 1926, but the Coolidge family was so charmed by the raccoon that they decided to keep her as a pet instead.

One of the most famous presidential pets is Caroline Kennedy’s horse Macaroni — named for the song “Yankee Doodle.”

Macaroni's other claim to fame: A magazine photo of Caroline, her dad JFK, and Macaroni inspired Neil Diamond to write “Sweet Caroline.”