Falconry, Unusual Pets
& Grabbing Snakes for Fun!
Under Construction
But Pretty Good Progress has been made! - so please do check out the lower portions
RFK & Falconry
When RFK Jr. was 11 he read The Once and Future King, T.H. White’s classic book about the King Arthur legend. A chapter about falconry particularly caught his attention and triggered his interest in raising and training birds (that and the encouragement of his father’s Arab friend Alva Mai Nye) – and he’s stuck with the hobby for the nearly sixty years since then!
Bobby is now an official master falconer and a State-licensed bird rehabilitator who has healed and released dozens of injured birds over the decades. And if he wasn’t already doing enough already during the days of his environmental activism work in the '90s RFK Jr. even wrote the New York state falconer’s exam manual.
Eleven-year-old Bobby actually started out by raising ducks, pheasants and homing pigeons, and then moved up to falconry proper with red-tailed hawks at age twelve.
Then when he was fourteen Bobby chose to attend New York’s Milbrook school largely because they offered falconry programs. There he and friends bonded over their shared interest as they trained hawks, banded and went on the hunt with them.
"The falcons Bobby trained to land on his arm were, in a mythological sense, emblematic. Falcons had been worshiped since earliest times as cosmic deities; the Egyptian god Horus is depicted as a falcon wearing a cobra-headed crown. The falcon came to represent the fight against our fears as well as being a metaphor for clear vision."
- Dick Russel, page 146, The Real RFK Jr. by Dick Russel
A Great video about RFK Jr's connection to animals and his deep spirituality - an excerpt from the new film The Real RFK JR. http://therealrfkjrmovie.com/
A short video about RFK Jr's history with Falconry in particular.
RFK Jr. & His Family's UNUSUAL PETS!
Over a lifetime of fascination with nature and the incredible diversity of creatures living within it Bobby has unsurprisingly had a number of unusual pets. At their 1960s-era Hickory Hill home in Virginia RFK, Ethel and the kids were privileged to have a variety of pets - including the fairly usual such as dogs, horses and goats - but some rather unique pets as well.
JFK and the Ill-Fated Salamander
ssafd
Bobby's Pet Lion Mtoto
One of the earliest and most dramatic examples of this pattern of unique pets was a lion cub RFK Jr. was given while still a mid-teen and attending Millbrook high school. He named his new lion cub friend Mtoto (or Toto) Mbaya, meaning “Bad Boy” in Swahili. Mtoto was a gift from Kennedy family friend, the popular talk-show host Jack Paar who had rescued Toto and his cub siblings from being euthanized after they were used in the movie Born Free.
Toto was only ten weeks old when he joined Bobby and was able to stay in the Millbrook campus zoo, but he soon grew to 130 pounds, heavier than Bobby himself. One day as the young RFK Jr. was walking the lion through the zoo, Toto took off after a deer and dragged Bobby along after him holding desperately to the leash.
After the deer mauling incident it was decided that Toto more properly belonged at Florida’s Lion Country Safari Park.
The Pet Emu 'Toby'
Another, more recent unusual pet was Tobias an Emu – or rather ‘Toby’ the Emu – his less formal name. Apparently soon after Cheryl and Bobby started dating he bought Toby for Cheryl’s daughter to make a good impression.
At first Cheryl was impressed as Toby was initially about waist-height and kind of cute. But soon he grew to over six-feet and started to regularly get aggressive towards her as well as other people.
Cheryl started to really dislike the emu. RFK Jr. recalls coming home after work and finding Cheryl looking up the ‘life expectancy of emus’ on the computer. Eventually she apparently gave him an ultimatum ‘It’s me or the emu’. But before the emu drama seriously damaged their relationship it was attacked and eaten by a wild mountain lion.
https://youtu.be/hykDK80uviU?si=FRCl7oYbLZXSUV80
and here's a clip about when the Emu attacked Cheryl!
The Kennedy Family's Pet Sea Lion
Many of the Skakels (RFK Jr's mother Ethel’s maiden name) were outdoors-people and when one of them ended up catching a bunch of sea-lions Ethel and each of her siblings ended up receiving a surprise gift: a baby sea-lion in a crate!
Bobby recalls the sea lion – who they named ‘Sandy’ – showing up one Christmas day at their Hickory Hill home in Virginia when he was around age 6 or 7.
Sandy ended up staying with the family for a couple of years and mainly lived in the family swimming pool.
RFK Jr. described there being fish all over the yard and how Sandy the sea lion also liked to run with the family’s dogs. One day the local milkman told the family how surprised he was to have seen a sea lion walking down the street together with the Kennedy’s six dogs!
Eventually in 1959, RFK Sr. donated Sandy to the National Zoo where by all reports he went on to live a happy life with the other seals there.
A brief video RFK Jr. interview about Sandy:
https://youtu.be/FLdrh-tkBNo?si=l6G1MqaU16diXEV8
And a fun Smithsonian Archive's article with more details:
https://siarchives.si.edu/blog/mom-can-we-keep-him-ummm-no
Snake Grabbing -
https://youtu.be/Lswc_emf7vU?si=TLll2bAGB5fC7q9k
a bit more of the full content -
https://youtu.be/K3R2r5s-j8s?si=e3v3G5EX9TUZ7aUh
From his Wife Cheryl Hines' FaceBook page:
https://www.facebook.com/CherylHines/videos/2081466278664582/
Toto was only ten weeks old when he joined Bobby and was able to stay in the Millbrook campus zoo, but he soon grew to 130 pounds, heavier than Bobby himself. One day as the young RFK Jr. was walking the lion through the zoo, Toto took off after a deer and dragged Bobby along after him holding desperately to the leash.
After the deer mauling incident it was decided that Toto more properly belonged at Florida’s Lion Country Safari Park.
Snake Grabbing -
https://youtu.be/Lswc_emf7vU?si=TLll2bAGB5fC7q9k
a bit more of the full content -
https://youtu.be/K3R2r5s-j8s?si=e3v3G5EX9TUZ7aUh
From his Wife Cheryl Hines' FaceBook page:
https://www.facebook.com/CherylHines/videos/2081466278664582/