Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was getting aggravated, fingers tapping on his garden chair. As a reporter and a photographer crouched expectantly within the bushes behind his Los Angeles dwelling, his two wild ravens had been refusing to cooperate with a photograph shoot.
“I’m not going to reward their unhealthy habits,” he mentioned ultimately, 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 unbiased 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 concept. However an typically ignored a part of his pitch to voters is his picture, lengthy cultivated and never very calmly worn, as a rugged outdoorsman with a unusual enthusiasm for wildlife and nature.
And but I used to be shocked lately when a routine cellphone 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, essentially the most urgent of which was: “Can I meet the ravens?” I used to be going to be out in Los Angeles the following weekend anyway.
“Certain,” he mentioned.
Birds have lengthy been a selected fascination of Mr. Kennedy’s. Since his youth, he says, he has saved 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 youngsters’s guide about St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals, birds and the setting. Donors to his marketing campaign have been invited to go falconing with him.
Ravens are lovely, intelligent, cooperative and adaptive, fiercely protecting and ubiquitous. However they aren’t 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 fable and folklore. They’re opportunistic eaters of absolutely anything, however their consumption of carrion — their consolation with the useless — made them a nasty omen lengthy earlier than Edgar Allan Poe turned them right into a cliché.
Their collective noun is an “unkindness” or — watch for it — a “conspiracy” of ravens.
Mr. Kennedy, and the non-public and political curiosities surrounding him, has emerged as an unpredictable ingredient 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 purposes in additional than a dozen different states, however he’s unlikely to be formally authorized 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 satisfy them, joined by Ruth Fremson, a veteran New York Instances photographer.
On a hike along with his three canine, Mr. Kennedy informed us about his “first crow,” which got here into his life when he was about 10 years outdated. Ravens are bigger and smarter, and they’re “sociable,” he mentioned.
When he and his spouse, the actress Cheryl Hines, moved into their present dwelling 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 top of the summer time, they’ll be consuming from my arms.”
I requested him how Ms. Hines felt about this. “She’s good with the ravens,” he mentioned. However, he added, “She had a giant combat 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 each time she stepped exterior. Each morning, she puzzled: “Is right this moment going to be the day that I get up and kill an emu in my yard?”
At some point, alone at dwelling, 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. Recently, Ms. Hines has appeared as much as see them wanting 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 informed 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, educated her giant lens on the scene.
The ravens made a number of shut sweeps, one by one. 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 had been being notably cautious, with one appearing as a lookout whereas the opposite grabbed the meals. “Usually, they might each land on the identical time and are available towards me.”
This went on for greater than an hour, and so they appeared more and more cautious.
“I feel they don’t just like the digicam,” Mr. Kennedy mentioned.
We agreed to reconvene within the late afternoon, when the ravens could 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.
Once 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 would possibly draw them in. I discovered that one in every of Mr. Kennedy’s canine, Ronan, who’s now 13 and deeply arthritic, had in his prime killed a number of family animals, together with one more emu and a turtle (not Carruthers).
Quickly, the ravens had been nowhere to be seen. Mr. Kennedy apologized, however he was late for a tv spot.
Hours later, on the airport, he despatched a sequence 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 top of the week, they had 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.
