Buchanana
What a lot of people don’t realize about Andrew Jackson was the amount of mice he had. He was determined to raise more of the smallish rodent than any other President in the history of the Union.
His main competition was James Buchanan, who, during his term, had upwards of 150 domestic mice in the White House. He constructed an entire community for the mice, which he called “Buchanana.” By observing the mice, Buchanan believed he could gain some insight into the behaviors of the “common American.” This idea came after a prominent naturalist posited that all mammals share underlying tendencies, and will react the same in packs. Buchanana had a representative government, complete with a mock Capitol building. It had a glass ceiling so Buchanan could observe the mouse-Congress in action, and he secretly wished that the real Congress could be observed in the same way.
At first, Buchanana was a disaster. None of the mice would set foot in the Capitol building, so there were no laws, and the community was left to disorder. There was mating in the street, and the bolder of the mice tried to bite James Buchanan when he fed them. He cursed at them and pegged them with food pellets until they ran for cover. In desperation, Buchanan replaced all the podiums in the Capitol building with sugar cubes. It was a brilliant political move. The mice climbed all over each other for control of the floor. There was filibustering. Buchanan was very excited and danced around the room, holding his pants. The mice reacted to his movements with alarm. In the morning, Buchanan ordered that all the podiums in the real Capitol building add a shelf, on which would be placed a bucket of molasses for Senators and Congressmen to dip their fists in while they spoke.
When Buchanan left office, he took his great experiment into the Wisconsin prairie, and left the doors to Buchanana open. If the mice wanted to leave, they could leave freely. If they wanted to recruit more members, the door was open for that traffic as well. He ate lunch under a giant maple tree, and congratulated himself, and kept the hawks away from the mice with a big stick.