Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was getting irritated, fingers tapping on his garden chair. As a reporter and a photographer crouched expectantly within the bushes behind his Los Angeles house, his two wild ravens have been refusing to cooperate with a photograph shoot.
“I’m not going to reward their unhealthy habits,” he mentioned finally, closing the greasy bag of meat scraps he had introduced out for the birds. He strode into the home, trailed by a canine.
As an impartial presidential candidate, Mr. Kennedy, 70, has leaned into his storied political lineage, his profession in environmental regulation and his caustic anti-establishment beliefs that at occasions veer into conspiracy principle. However an typically ignored a part of his pitch to voters is his picture, lengthy cultivated and never very flippantly worn, as a rugged outdoorsman with a unusual enthusiasm for wildlife and nature.
And but I used to be shocked just lately when a routine telephone name to ask Mr. Kennedy for remark about one other article was interrupted by a loud “caw” on the different finish of the road.
Requested what the sound was, Mr. Kennedy paused, then mentioned, “I’ve a few pet ravens.”
I had many questions, probably the most urgent of which was: “Can I meet the ravens?” (One other, left unstated, was: Are they after the mind worm?) I used to be going to be out in Los Angeles the subsequent weekend anyway.
“Positive,” he mentioned.
Birds have lengthy been a selected fascination of Mr. Kennedy’s. Since his youth, he says, he has stored ravens, peacocks, crows, owls, homing pigeons and guinea fowl as pets. He trains hawks and hunts with them; in New York, he says he was a licensed rehabilitator of birds, caring for injured or orphaned ones. In 2005, he printed a kids’s ebook about St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals, birds and the surroundings. Donors to his marketing campaign have been invited to go falconing with him.
Ravens are stunning, intelligent, cooperative and adaptive, fiercely protecting and ubiquitous. However they don’t seem to be the stuff of well mannered society. Their black plumage, beady eyes, haunting cry and keen scavenging have earned them a distinguished and creepy place in fantasy and folklore. They’re opportunistic eaters of absolutely anything, however their consumption of carrion — their consolation with the lifeless — made them a foul omen lengthy earlier than Edgar Allan Poe turned them right into a cliché.
Their collective noun is an “unkindness” or — anticipate it — a “conspiracy” of ravens.
Mr. Kennedy, and the private and political curiosities surrounding him, has emerged as an unpredictable component on this presidential election, with some polls displaying him within the double digits, drawing votes from each President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump. Even when he’s unable to get on the poll in sufficient states to win, he might nonetheless tip the election: He’s already on the poll within the battleground state of Michigan, together with 5 different states.
His marketing campaign has submitted poll functions in additional than a dozen different states, however he’s unlikely to be formally accredited for these ballots in time to qualify for CNN’s presidential debate subsequent week.
Nonetheless, he had time to introduce the ravens final week, so I drove out to the hilly reaches of northwest Los Angeles to fulfill them, joined by Ruth Fremson, a veteran New York Instances photographer.
On a hike together with his three canines, Mr. Kennedy instructed us about his “first crow,” which got here into his life when he was about 10 years previous. Ravens are bigger and smarter, and they’re “sociable,” he mentioned.
When he and his spouse, the actress Cheryl Hines, moved into their present house about 4 years in the past, he observed a pair of ravens nesting in a big palm tree. A couple of months in the past, he mentioned, he determined to attempt to tame them. The primary technique is meals.
“They arrive nearer and nearer,” he mentioned. “By the tip of the summer season, they’ll be consuming from my palms.”
I requested him how Ms. Hines felt about this. “She’s good with the ravens,” he mentioned. However, he added, “She had a giant battle with my emu.”
Again on the home, Ms. Hines confirmed: “This emu was so aggressive.”
The emu, Toby, had moved out to Malibu with Mr. Kennedy in 2014 and took up residence within the yard. However Toby was jealous of Ms. Hines, and took to charging at her violently. She began carrying a shovel in self-defense every time she stepped exterior. Each morning, she puzzled: “Is in the present day going to be the day that I get up and kill an emu in my yard?”
In the future, alone at house, she took a name from a producer and stepped exterior for higher reception. “I begin telling him about this script, and the emu begins chasing me as quick as he might,” she recalled.
Right here, Ms. Hines — dressed for a pickleball match — did an impression of pitching a producer whereas batting away a big, flightless hen.
Years later, Toby was killed by a mountain lion.
The ravens are comparatively unobjectionable, Ms. Hines mentioned, even “cute.” However when Mr. Kennedy is away on the marketing campaign path, they could be a little needy. Lately, Ms. Hines will look as much as see them trying down at her, impatiently, from the skylight of their rest room. “Like: ‘When is he coming again?’”
Even with ravens gently rapping at her chamber door, Ms. Hines mentioned, she didn’t reply “Nevermore.”
As a substitute she instructed them, “Guys, I’m not .”
As she recounted this, Mr. Kennedy grabbed the bag of meat scraps — “low-cost steak,” he mentioned — from the fridge and stepped into the yard. Elevating his head, he shouted: “Caw! Caw!”
A couple of moments later, two black arrows emerged towards the sky, circling and drifting, their spade-like tails and feathers gleaming as they drew nearer. They referred to as again.
Mr. Kennedy tossed some meat onto the deck, then sat in a garden chair, whereas Ruth, about 20 ft away, skilled her giant lens on the scene.
The ravens made a number of shut sweeps, one after the other. Lastly, one perched on a close-by tree whereas the opposite alighted on the deck. It grabbed the meat, and the pair flew off.
“That is uncommon,” Mr. Kennedy mentioned. The birds have been being significantly cautious, with one appearing as a lookout whereas the opposite grabbed the meals. “Usually, they might each land on the similar time and are available towards me.”
This went on for greater than an hour, they usually appeared more and more cautious.
“I believe they don’t just like the digicam,” Mr. Kennedy mentioned.
We agreed to reconvene within the late afternoon, when the ravens is likely to be much less skittish. Within the meantime, we took a tour of his workplace, the place we noticed a big stuffed turtle — his erstwhile pet, Carruthers — and a taxidermied Sumatran tiger, a present from President Sukarno of Indonesia to Mr. Kennedy’s father, Robert F. Kennedy.
After we returned, hours later, the ravens nonetheless appeared deeply suspicious. Ruth and I moved on and off the deck, hoping that taking part in it cool may draw them in. I discovered that one among Mr. Kennedy’s canines, Ronan, who’s now 13 and deeply arthritic, had in his prime killed a number of family animals, together with an emu and a turtle (not Carruthers).
Quickly, the ravens have been nowhere to be seen. Mr. Kennedy apologized, however he was late for a tv spot.
Hours later, on the airport, he despatched a collection of images and movies. Apparently, as soon as we had left, the ravens had alighted collectively.
“Now they’re cooperating,” Mr. Kennedy mentioned. By the tip of the week, they have been inside arm’s attain.
This week, he launched the birds to his followers with a video on social media. “I’ve gotten them to return in and be part of me for meditations each morning on my balcony,” he mentioned.
“Edgar Allen Potus,” one commenter wrote on Instagram.
