People frequently ask me where do I get my ideas for my pictures. Sometimes they come to me from a dream. Other times, they come from a 48-hour tequila binge. But most often than not, they come from history itself. Truth is after all, stranger than fiction. Case in point, the above picture of President William Taft riding a badger was inspired by a real-life evident when William Taft rode a badger.
The place was Utica, New York. The time was May of 1910. Taft, our nation's heaviest president sat aside a rare giant badger and rode the beast through that city's largest thoroughfare during a local parade. It was an awesome sight and the raucous crowd felt silent when the POTUS passed. Tragedy struck hours later, long after the president boarded a train for Poughkeepsie, when the badger grew enraged and savaged two clowns and a majorette. Badger riding, a brief fad in the 1910s, was deemed cruel and dangerous. In 1972, the last of the Giant Eastern Badgers died and the species was declared extinct.
