“Fancy,” said Burroughs, “a President of the United States stalking rapidly across bushy fields to the woods, eager as a boy and filled with the one idea of showing to his visitors the black-throated green warbler!”
Roosevelt told Burroughs that when he was President he would sometimes go on bird excursions in the White House grounds. People passing would stop and stare at him as he stood gazing up into the trees.
“No doubt they thought me insane,” he said.
“Yes,” added Mrs. Roosevelt, who was present, “and as I was always with him, they no doubt thought that I was the nurse that had him in charge.”
Roosevelt’s effective war on “nature fakirs” could not have been possible had he not known intimately the habits and nature of birds and animals, and never was he found wanting. Roosevelt’s intense interest in wild animals, it may be noted in passing, showed itself in his early boyhood. Of the minister of his church he demanded to know the nature of a “zeal.”
“What is a zeal?” repeated the puzzled parson.
“You read about him in the Psalms,” said Ted.
The minister picked up his Bible. There he found the answer: “For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.”