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Here's the thing ... raccoons are buck wild. They're best known for running around eating trash and generally behaving like the animal kingdom's shiftiest Floridians. The Coolidge's soon found that inviting the methiest of all animals into the White House might be a bit difficult. Though they fell in love with their new pet, it was undeniably out of control at the same time. Clawing, scratching, and escaping just about every opportunity it got, Rebecca the Raccoon probably made the whole job of running the free world thing harder than it needed to be.Â
And so, the Coolidges did as presidents with shitty pets that they have no business owning have done before them: pawned that maniac raccoon off to a zoo and washed their hands completely of the responsibility. Forget access to Area 51; it seems like the most incredible power you receive on day one as president is being able to get the most irresponsible pet for a few days, then send it off to go live with some rando zookeeper when it starts ripping cabinet members' faces off.
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Lord Byron's Personal Pixar Movie
Service animals have become something of a worn-out punchline. There's no doubt that people have abused these regulations that do genuinely help a lot of people. Every once in a while, you'll see a picture of an iguana on a leash during a Southwest flight to Tucson, but it's really not that big of a deal. Eccentric British poet Lord Byron, however, might be the OG when it comes to bending the service pet rules.Â
A lover of all kinds of animals, allegedly owning everything from peacocks to crocodiles, it was his pet dogs that Byron most loved. So when he went to attend Trinity College in Cambridge with his pup in tow, he was stunned to learn you can't have Ye Olde Air Bud sitting in British Literature 200 next to you. But Byron, much like the service pet scammers of today, found a way around this.
Realizing that he wasn't going to win the battle on having a pet dog in the classroom, he grabbed a different type of animal, one that wasn't explicitly mentioned in the university's rulebook: a whole ass bear. (Was he bros with Zebulon Pike too?) Â Byron casually scooped up a bear cub, threw that furry mayhem machine on a chain, and walked it around campus like it was no big deal. The university couldn't, and didn't, do anything about it, as Intro To Russian Lit TAs aren't paid to deal with random acts of bear.Â
Byron simply continued with his education, and pet bear, in what should be a lesson to colleges today: just let every student have a dog with them at all times. It'd be a much more tolerable way to spend four blissful years before graduating, and realizing that you're going to die with $90,000 of student loan debt and a concrete slab of dining hall food in your stomach that will never fully digest.
Top Image: Grand Teton/Flickr
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