We Ought to Have More Creatures

On March 24, 1910, an eccentric researcher at the Department of Agriculture named Robert Irwin stood before the House Committee on Agriculture and declared: “Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, in studying the resources of our country for a good many years, I was led to the conclusion that we ought to have more creatures than we are raising here.” Irwin’s presence at the meeting was one of his own making. A long-time advocate of diversifying America’s livestock, Irwin had been the one who convinced Louisiana Representative Robert Broussard that hippos were the solution to both Louisiana's invasive water hyacinth problem and an ongoing national meat shortage, leading to Broussard’s introduction of House Resolution 23261, better known as the “American Hippo Bill.” The bill — part of Irwin’s larger vision of populating the country with an array of exotic animals (Tibetan yaks in the Rockies, rhinos in the Southwest, dik-diks on family farms, etc.) — would appropriate $250,000 for the introduction of useful new animals into the United States, hippos among them. The bill was endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt, who himself owned a menagerie of exotic pets, the New York Times, and others, but never passed.