RFK Jr. Bitten While Wrestling Snake on Dr. Oz’s Patio
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted a video of himself wrestling a snake with his bare hands on the patio of Dr. Mehmet Oz’s home.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has added snakes to the list of creatures in dispute.
In a now-viral video posted to X on May 26, Kennedy is seen grabbing and picking up two creatures from the home of Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
As with previous wildlife encounters, the Health Secretary took it upon himself to deal with the situation. − Of course, it was done with his bare hands, much to the chagrin of his wife, Cheryl Hines.
“Honey, honey! Why? Why?” Kennedy, dressed in full business professional attire, could be heard asking Hines as he bent down to grab the black reptile. As the snake jumped and slithered in an attempt to escape, Kennedy managed to grab it with both hands, narrowly avoiding their attempts to grab a mouthful of skin.
As he proudly dangled them in the air for the camera, one of them managed to land a nice blow on Kennedy’s hand. While Hines continues to worry off-camera, Oz and Kennedy laugh it off while trying to identify the type of snake and therefore whether the bite is anything to worry about.
“Are you biting?” Oz asks.
“Yeah,” Kennedy laughed, holding up his injured hand.
Hines expressed concern that the snake might be a poisonous water moccasin, but Kennedy ultimately dismissed his concerns as the reptile continued to writhe in his hands.
“Honey, please, let them go! Bobby, please!” Kennedy can be heard saying as she beckons Oz to “take a picture” with the creature.
“Cheryl is rooting for the removal of a pair of black racers from Dr. Oz’s courtyard,” Kennedy wrote in the caption of the post, identifying the species of snake.
Was the snake that bit RFK Jr. poisonous?
Fortunately for Kennedy, the Southern Black Racer is a common, non-venomous species commonly found in the southeastern United States. Their bites can be unpleasant, but they pose no danger to humans. According to the Florida Museum, unless you try to catch a snake with your bare hands, you’re unlikely to get bitten in the first place.
“North American racers are not dangerous to people or pets, but they can easily bite to protect themselves,” the museum said. “Racers are not aggressive and avoid direct contact with people and pets. Virtually all bites occur when the snake is intentionally sexually abused.”
Still, the museum warns that they should be left alone, especially if the species is unknown, as they are not known to attack unless cornered.
Do not interact with, remove, or kill snakes without consulting a professional. In many cases, there is no need to interfere at all. If bitten, remove any jewelry that may restrict blood circulation. If swelling occurs, keep the bitten limb below heart level and consult a doctor.
If you are bitten by a venomous or unidentified snake, prompt treatment with antivenom is important. Please consult your nearest hospital or medical institution immediately.
“I’ve been picking up roadkill all my life”: Kennedy and the history of animals
It’s no surprise that Kennedy’s previously publicized wild animal escapades, from freezers full of car crashes to home biology “experiments,” regularly draw attention to his animal-related posts. For example, in early May, an Instagram photo of President Kennedy “rescuing” a bird at Dulles Airport prompted a flurry of jokes about him eating a starling, with one commenting that the president looked like he was holding the bird “like an ice cream cone.”
The Secretary of Health’s alleged encounter with a whale carcass is one of his most famous wildlife stories. Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy, President Kennedy’s eldest son, said in a 2012 interview with Town & Country that her father used a chainsaw to bring the giant animal’s head to life during a family vacation in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
Kick Kennedy, who was six years old during the trip, recalled his father rushing to the beach after word spread that a whale carcass had washed up on shore. She recalled that after decapitating the body, Kennedy tied its head to the roof of the family’s minivan with a bungee cord and made the less-than-comfortable five-hour drive to Mount Kisco, New York.
“Every time I accelerated on the highway, whale juice poured into my car window. It was the worst thing on earth,” Kick Kennedy told the magazine. “We were all wearing plastic bags over our heads with mouth holes cut out, and people were pointing fingers at us on the highway, and it was just a normal, everyday thing for us.”
The National Marine Fisheries Service told The Associated Press in 2024 that it was investigating the incident as a possible violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, but the investigation was ultimately discontinued.
Kennedy’s apparent roadkill tendencies have crept into other headlines in recent years, and one such article raised eyebrows in April, in the midst of publication of his biography, RFK Jr.: The Fall and Rise. In the book, journalist Isabel Vincent details a 2001 entry in Kennedy’s personal diary in which he describes how he pulled over to cut out the genitals of a dead raccoon while his children waited in the car.
“I was standing in front of a parked car on Route 684, cutting the penis out of a dead raccoon in the road, thinking about how weird some of my family members had become,” the entry reads. Vincent told People magazine that Kennedy intended to “research” the body part.
“I’ve been picking up roadkill all my life. I have a freezer full of roadkill,” Kennedy told reporters while running for president in 2024, this time in response to a New Yorker report about a man who picked up a dead bear cub on the side of the road.
The then-presidential candidate also told comedian Roseanne Barr in an August 2024 conversation that he witnessed a car hit and kill a bear during a hiking trip in upstate New York in 2014. He placed the body in his car, intending to skin it and put the meat “in[his]refrigerator.” He then carried the car around all day, including visiting a steakhouse in Brooklyn, and when he realized he had to catch a flight, he abandoned the body in Central Park.
“I thought it would be interesting for whoever found it,” Barr told Barr of his plan to stage the bear’s body to look like it had been hit by a bicycle in the park. The unexplained presence of a 6-month-old baby in New York’s largest urban green space has sparked a decade-long mystery.
An experienced falconer, Kennedy is also known for raising and training birds of prey. This hobby went a little too far in the eyes of at least one family member, cousin Caroline Kennedy, who wrote a letter to the senator during Kennedy’s health secretary confirmation hearings, calling him a “predator.”
She claimed that President Kennedy “enjoyed showing off how he would put baby chickens and mice into a blender to feed the hawks” and that “perverted scenes of desperation and violence” often occurred.
And, of course, there was a parasite that “got into my brain and ate parts of it and died,” Kennedy told the New York Times in 2025, but whether that constitutes an animal rights issue is debatable.
