Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Once Lived With an Emu Who Regularly Attacked His Wife (Now He Just Has Pet Ravens He Feeds Meat Scraps and Yells “Caw! Caw!” To)
No one can predict the future, yet you will probably not go broke betting that there will never be a weirder story about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. than the one about his brain being partially eaten by a worm that crawled inside and died. That’s not to say there won’t be more weird ones, just that they probably won’t top the brain-eating-worm one. They’ll definitely get up there, though.
Case in point: On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that the presidential candidate (1) previously lived with an emu and that (2) said emu was so aggressive with his wife that she had to carry around a shovel for protection.
Yes, in an interview with the paper of record, Kennedy revealed that Cheryl Hines is “good” with his wild pet ravens—more on them later—in contrast to how she felt about Toby the Emu, who “moved out to Malibu with Mr. Kennedy in 2014 and took up residence in the backyard.” Why didn’t Hines like Toby? Probably because he “took to charging at her violently,” and not just once or twice, but so frequently that she “started carrying a shovel in self-defense whenever she stepped outside.” Speaking about the ordeal to reporter Rebecca Davis O’Brien, the actor said that every morning she would wonder: “Is today going to be the day that I wake up and kill an emu in my backyard?” Luckily for Hines, Toby is no longer around (he was killed by a mountain lion).
At this time, you surely are not wondering whether Toby was the only emu that ever lived in Kennedy’s house (since the idea of having cohabitated with more than one emu would be nuts). Yet there was indeed another emu whose name is not revealed but whose existence we know about because the Times notes in passing that “one of Mr. Kennedy’s dogs, Ronan, who is now 13 and deeply arthritic, had in his prime killed several household animals, including yet another emu and a turtle.”
Anyway, Hines now lives in relative safety, but she also lives with a man who, as he told the Times, has “a couple of pet ravens.”
The ravens are comparatively unobjectionable, Ms. Hines said, even “cute.” But when Mr. Kennedy is away on the campaign trail, they can be a little needy. Lately, Ms. Hines has looked up to see them looking down at her, impatiently, from the skylight in their bathroom. “Like: ‘When is he coming back?’”
As she recounted this, Mr. Kennedy grabbed the bag of meat scraps—“cheap steak,” he said—from the refrigerator and stepped into the backyard. Raising his head, he shouted: “Caw! Caw!”
The ravens made their debut on Kennedy’s X account last week:
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