It wasn’t just the dead bear.

Days after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. admitted to taking a bear carcass from the side of the road and placing it in Central Park as a prank a decade ago, he said that has been picking up roadkill his “whole life” and once had a “freezer full of it” at home.

The comment came as the independent presidential candidate was leaving an upstate New York courtroom Wednesday where he had testified in a lawsuit seeking to exclude him from the state’s ballot in November.

The trial has focused on whether Kennedy improperly listed a residence in the New York City suburb of Katonah as his home address on his nominating petitions, when he has actually been living in the Los Angeles area since 2014.

  • catloaf@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    That’s probably how he got the brain worm in the first place, actually.

  • d00phy@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Behind the Bastards has a really good three-parter on him that they just released. He has a real love for falconry and a history of being around rotting meat.

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    TBH it’s not that weird to keep roadkill. That’s a thing that happens in more rural areas; a deer gets hit, game warden gets called, and then the person that hit the deer takes it home, field dresses, and butchers it. I personally know a few people that have done this, because it feels really wasteful to kill a deer and then just leave it to rot and be picked apart by crows and vultures.

    Given that bears tend to have very high rates of parasitic infections though, I don’t think I’d do this with bear at all.

    • ZapBeebz_@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Depends on the roadkill, honestly. Deer as roadkill, especially if you’re the one who hit it (or saw it hit) isn’t too bad, because it’s already an animal normally eaten, and is reasonably fresh.

      Now a raccoon that’s been on the side of the road for god knows how long…that’s a different story.

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        Yes, I should have specified that you need to see it hit, or come across it very, very shortly afterwards.

        • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Tug at the fur. If it stays in, you’re good. If it comes out, then it’s been there too long.

          • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            🤮

            If I didn’t see it get hit, or personally put it out of it’s misery after being hit, I ain’t risking it.

    • Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      He used to keep roadkill in the fridge to feed his pet hawk. It wasn’t even his fridge, it belonged to friends who would let him crash there. They’d ask why not just buy chickens for the hawk to eat, but rfk is a fucking weirdo and thought that keeping roadkill in his friend’s fridge was a better feeding option for his hawk

      • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        The hawk likes the taste of roadkill/carrion better. My partner is trying to get in to falconry and has done an uncomfortable amount of research on the topic.

      • cheers_queers@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        i was raised by people like this. the correct answer is that he saved a buck or two.

    • Soulg@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Yeah I’m confused about why this is such a big story. Dumping the bear in central park is kinda fucked up, sure, but even then is it really that huge of a story lol

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        I think that dumping a bear–in a densely populated area!–is a bigger story, but that one is more because there wasn’t any attempt made AFAIK to notify relevant authorities. You aren’t supposed to just pick up road-kill animals without permission, since that could easily lead to poaching. And bear, in many states, tend to have much more tightly restricted hunting, since there are far fewer of them than deer.

        (I see black bears on a near daily basis where I live, but I’m in rural Appalachia.)

  • slickgoat@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Oh, taking a dead beat roadkill prize wasn’t even the best bit of this extremely juicy story.

    When he encountered the dead bear cub, he and his rich hipsters friends were on their way to go “falconing”.

    Yes… falconing.

    Bonus points. When the story broke of a dead bear being discovered in Central Park ten years ago, his niece who was a journalist for the NY Times wrote the piece - not knowing that her own uncle was responsible for a dead bear being in NYC Central Park!

    Can the story get any better

    • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      He’s been into falconry since he was a young boy to be fair. Everyone should listen to Behind the Bastards new podcast about him. First couple episodes I was like yeah, he’s fucked up from his family, sympathetic, loves hallucinogenic and other drugs, I kinda like this guy.

      Third episode- ehhh I dunno…

      Final episode- holy shit he’s an actual baby murdering psychopath

      • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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        3 months ago

        Not sure if I’ve listened to Episode 4 yet, but Robert Evans talked about how this guy used to go hang out in a pit full of rotting cow and sheep carcasses and would keep rotting roadkill in his friend’s refrigerators to feed his falcon. He definitely has some weird obsession with rotting corpses.

      • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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        3 months ago

        That he’s been rich and out of touch since he was young isn’t in any way a counter to him being rich and out of touch now.

        And whatever else he does, he’s a lying anti-vaxxer with enough influence that that’s not just a personal oddity and instead something that gets other people sick and/or killed.

        • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Yeah he’s terrible. I’m not defending him. Seriously check out that podcast. Before I listened I was like he’s a moron vaccine denying rich old man. Now I actually hate the guy.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        He’s been into falconry since he was a young boy to be fair.

        To be fair?

        Would your family have been able to afford to be into falconry as a young boy? Mine sure wouldn’t and we weren’t exactly poor.

        This is the epitome of being rich and out of touch.

        • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Fuck yeah. I believe the quote was “I have a hawk that’s trained to kill cops” then approaching the officer and whipping out the bird from beneath his cloak.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Oh, well that certainly excuses taking it with you back to New York, going to a steakhouse, forgetting about the bear carcass, realizing you will be late to the airport, then driving to Midtown, which is nowhere near any of New York’s airports, dropping the bear carcass off and putting a bike next to it to make it look like the bike somehow killed a baby bear.

    Except no it doesn’t in any way.

    The brain worms did a lot of damage.

  • 58008@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    This guy’s Ratatouille kitchen helper is a dead badger with a crushed face.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    How can we be sure that this roadkill in his freezer was all animal? And not maybe … someome.