Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he once dumped a dead bear cub in Central Park
NEW YORK — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once left a road-killed bear cub in Central Park because his falconing expedition encroached on his airport-arrival time, he revealed in a video released Sunday.
“Looking forward to seeing how you spin this one, @NewYorker,” he captioned the three-minute clip of him regaling Donald Trump-supporting comedian Roseanne Barr with the tale of a roadkill supper gone awry. The magazine is about to publish a profile of the independent presidential hopeful.
It all happened about 10 years ago, he said, detailing the uncompleted exploit in a kitchen as the view panned between him and Barr, and chortling could be heard off-camera. He was supposed to meet friends for a falconing expedition in Goshen, N.Y., when a woman driving a van in front of him “hit a bear and killed it,” he said. “A young bear.”
NYPD officers investigate a dead bear cub that was found in Central Park in Manhattan, New York Manhattan Central Park in October 2014. (Marcus Santos / New York Daily News) RFK Jr. sprang into action, without detailing the condition of the woman or her vehicle.
“So I pulled over and picked up the bear and put it in the back of my van, because I was gonna skin the bear, because it was in very good condition, and I was gonna put the meat in my refrigerator,” he said to a nodding Barr. “You can do that in New York State, you can get a bear tag for a roadkill bear.”
He then proceeded to go hawking, bear in car, catching a lot of game and having a much better day than said bear, he said. The partying went late, and instead of going home to Westchester County he realized he’d have to head straight to a dinner at Peter Luger in NYC, apparently swapping beef for bear.
That party, too, went late, forcing him to head straight to the airport.
“And the bear was in my car, and I didn’t want to leave the bear in my car,” he said.
Blaming “the little bit of the redneck in me,” he sketched his plan, which his drunk friends convinced him was a great idea.
“There had been a series of bicycle accidents in New York,” he said, with people badly injured. “And I said, ‘Look, I’ve got an old bike in my car that somebody asked me to get rid of. I said, ‘Let’s go put the bear in Central Park, and we’ll make it look like he got hit by a bike. So we went and did that, and we thought it would be amusing for whoever found it or something.”
The next day, he said, every television station and newspaper were leading with the mysterious story, and there was “like a mile of yellow tape, and there were 20 cop cars,” he said, as Barr’s jaw dropped. “There were helicopters flying over it.”