A few months after the attack on Pearl Harbor thrust the United States into World War II, a little girl was walking to school in northwest Washington, D.C. when she found a baby squirrel that had apparently fallen out of a hickory tree. She took the tiny rodent home, fed him warm milk, and made him a cozy bed in a red woolen hat. Not long afterward, the girl’s family had to move away, and she gave her pet to a neighbor, a middle-aged housewife named Zaidee Bullis.  It was Bullis who, through creativity, patriotism, and a flare for the zany, would make Tommy Tucker a home front war hero and, for a time, the most famous rodent in America after Mickey Mouse. Tommy Tucker poses in several of his handmade outfits. Image: Public Domain Tommy Tucker’s early life  Eastern grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) are ubiquitous across the parks and backyards of our nation’s capital, and in some ways Tommy Tucker did not stand out from his wild brethren. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, he was an opportunistic omnivore who enjoyed “nuts, grains, fruits, bread, sweet cookies, vegetables, with avocado pear as a delicacy,” reported LIFE Magazine, in a 1944 photo essay that also showed him getting a free sample of deli meat from his neighborhood butcher. His claws were “as sharp as needles,” his teeth were “golden brown,” he enjoyed gnawing on things and administered the occasional bite to his human handler (although “Mrs. Bullis never complains about being bitten,” the magazine noted).  On the other hand, Tommy never got the chance to climb a tree or forage for nuts. His social schedule didn’t permit it—and neither did his wardrobe, which consisted of as many as 100 handmade costumes, including “a coat and hat for going to market, a silk-pleated dress for company,” and “a Red Cross dress for visiting the hospital.” (“Though Tommy is a male squirrel, he has to wear feminine clothes because his tail interferes with his wearing pants,” the magazine’s editors deadpanned.) Tommy first gained fans around Washington, as Bullis took him on errands, carrying him on her arm as she visited the grocery store, the bakery, and the florist. Soon, he was cheering up patients at the local children’s hospital and appearing at elementary school assemblies. He enjoyed the attention—at least according to a type-written “autobiography,” The True Story of Tommy Tucker, which was allegedly dictated to his “mistress,” Bullis. Tommy Tucker visits a young patinet, Jimmy Claggett, at Children’s Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. on January 9, 1944. Image: The Washington Post / Contributor / Getty Images The Washington Post How Tommy the squirrel helped sell war bonds It wasn’t long before Tommy—who by the mid-1940s boasted 30,000 members of his official fan club—stepped up to help with the war effort. Some wag at the U.S. Department of the Treasury made him a custom booth, behind which—dressed in red, white, and blue satin—he stood to stump for war bonds. Once merely a squirrel-about-town, he was now crisscrossing the country by train and making radio appearances alongside President Roosevelt himself.  “You have become a very famous squirrel, indeed,” a Treasury official wrote to him, “with bomber crews carrying your picture over the fighting fronts, letters from notables everywhere, your picture in LIFE magazine, a coast-to-coast radio hookup, in which you asked in good ‘squirrel language’ for people to buy bonds.” A squirrel in a dress is admittedly silly, but his nation’s gratitude was quite serious. Tommy’s archives include not only letters from children but also from troops on the front lines. “We carry your picture with us when we fly,” wrote Army Air Force Sgt. Morris A. Goodrich. “And when we look at your picture, we realize the wonderful work you are doing for us and it gives us much more confidence, so we can do the job we have to do.”  Tommy Tucker’s extensive wardrobe is now housed at the Smithsonian Archives. Image: The Washington Post / Contributor / Getty Images The Washington Post Tommy the squirrel’s pink satin legacy After the war, Tommy’s schedule eased up, and he was able to accompany Bullis and her husband on sight-seeing ventures. The Bullises hauled his now substantial wardrobe and other baggage in a trailer behind their Packard Touring Car. It was on one of these trips that Tommy died, at the Grand Canyon, in 1949. The Bullises enlisted the services of an Arizona taxidermist, who posed Tommy with his arms out so even post-mortem his outfit could be changed. After the Bullises themselves died a few years later, Tommy’s remains, along with some of his dresses and a collection of correspondence and press clippings, passed to a relative, Elaine Le Martine, who kept him on top of her china cabinet. When she died, in 2005, she willed the collection to the Smithsonian, which—thanks to the facilitation of a dogged Washington Post columnist—ultimately accepted the gift in 2012.  Today, Tommy Tucker himself can be viewed by appointment at the Smithsonian Archives. He’s a little worse for wear—apparently the moths found him up on that china cabinet—but he’s as well-attired as ever, in a pink satin dress with a tiny strand of pearls. In That Time When, Popular Science tells the weirdest, surprising, and little-known stories that shaped science, engineering, and innovation. Other 'That Time When' Stories When the U.S. almost nuked Alaska—on purpose Andrew Jackson’s White House once hosted a cheese feeding frenzy The space billboard that nearly happened The radioactive ‘miracle water’ that killed its believers During WWII, the U.S. government censored the weather The U.S. tried permanent daylight saving time—and hated it The 21 grams experiment that tried to weigh a human soul The post During WWII, a dress-wearing squirrel sold war bonds alongside FDR appeared first on Popular Science. ...read more read less