Politics is a Bear Carcass

Wow. The evolving kerfuffle around Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (RFK Jr.) leaving a dead bear cub in NYC’s Central Park is another odd chapter in this guy’s bio. He had posted a video on X where he recounted a story to Rosanne Barr about the bear cub incident.

Harvesting roadkill for food is not something people often do in the big city, but up the holler it is occasionally indulged in. I lived for a time outside of Durango, Colorado, where an elk herd would winter-over north of town along the Animas River. My experience was that elk were a little different from skittish deer in that a bull elk would just stand in the road and stare at you as you closed in on it. Not only would the damage to your vehicle and the elk be serious, but the height of an adult elk assures that it would slide over the hood and through the windshield and into your face. An unpleasant scenario to be sure.

One morning while commuting into Durango I passed the carcass of a large bull elk lying alongside the road, dead as a door nail. On my return commute that evening the elk carcass had been replaced by a large pile of glistening pink entrails. It was a bonanza for some lucky sod. I learned later that this was fairly common and was told that the forest service (or some other lucky group) even had a special disposal facility for roadkill.

It is worth noting that RFK Jr. mentioned that he is a falconer. It stands to reason that a falconer might be inclined to collect roadkill to feed the bird. The natural instinct to avoid roadkill might be overridden by a falconer.

He did say that he was going to take the bear cub home, skin it and put the meat in his refrigerator. He didn’t mention eating it. Maybe he was going to use the meat to feed his falcon. From personal experience I can say that bear meat is less than choice eating. As a starving undergrad living off campus, I was gifted some bear sausage which I made into chili. It was awful- the sausage spices were meant to cover up the taste, but it just didn’t work. I fried the bear sausage first before adding to the chili and it stunk up the whole apartment.

The stashing of the bear cub carcass in Central Park by RFK Jr. and his drunken friends was meant to be a prank, he claims, relating to recent published accounts of bicycling fatalities there. He said the intention was to make it look like a bicyclist hit the bear. I don’t know, if I were with drunk buddies late at night, it might well seem funny to me too, especially since the carcass was in the trunk anyway.

Nonetheless, a story like this going public for a politician can only detract from their campaign and should have been left unrevealed and deep in the murky depths of time. The revulsion to an animal carcass can only translate into revulsion to the candidate.

Though not at all a fan of RFK Jr., I can sympathize with him just a tiny bit on this fiasco, anti-vax flake though he is.