Snakes on a campaign! When animals attack politicians

Paul Dallison writes Declassified, a weekly satirical column. It’s official: Members of the European Parliament are not the most dangerous creatures in Europe! French MEP Manon Aubry wrote on social media on Monday that she was in hospital after being bitten by a viper. Aubry didn’t say where the snake attack took place, but she was smiling in her post, despite what she said were “complications related to the poisoning.” The leftist MEP is far from the only politician to have been attacked by an animal, however. Here are a few more (no animals were harmed in the writing of this article): Snakebitten The chances of being bitten by a snake in Europe are slim — there are “fewer than 300 such cases in France each year,” according to Aubry — but it’s more common when you venture further afield. Last year, Inna Gardiner, a politician from Jersey — the largest of the Channel Islands — was bitten by a Malayan Pit Viper during a holiday in Thailand. And West Virginia politician Doug Skaff was bitten twice by venomous snakes in 2024 while removing campaign signs (and he hadn’t even won the election he was competing in). In a rare case of “man attacks snake,” U.S. Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. was filmed earlier this year picking up a pair of snakes in the home of Mehmet Oz, a former TV doctor who now heads up the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “Cheryl cheerleads the removal of a pair of Black Racers from Dr Oz’s patio,” Kennedy captioned a social media post of the incident, referencing his wife, actress Cheryl Hines. A woman in the footage can be heard speaking for all of us by simply saying: “Why?” This is the same RFK Jr. who cut the head off a dead whale and strapped it to the roof of the family minivan; who dumped a dead bear cub carcass in Central Park; and who cut off the penis of a road-killed raccoon. Something to sink your teeth into During a visit to Chişinău in 2023, Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen was bitten by a rescue dog belonging to Moldovan President Maia Sandu. Sandu had brought her dog, named Codruț, to a photo op with Van der Bellen and Slovenian President Nataša Pirc Musar. Van der Bellen reached down to pet Codruț, but the dog lunged at him and snapped at his right hand. Sandu apologized and explained Codruț had become overwhelmed (presumably as it’s such a big fan of Austrian politics). Sandro Garibaldi, a member of the regional council in Liguria for the League, was bitten on the hand by a wolf earlier this year. Garibaldi had interrupted the wolf in the process of killing some sheep. It’s not clear if the wolf in question was the same one that killed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s pet pony, Dolly. A flock of Lories, arboreal parrots make friends with German Chancellor Angela Merkel during her visit to the bird park in Marlow. | Franzi Zoger/EPA Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel wasn’t bitten by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s dog when she visited his home in Sochi back in 2007; she was just scared by it. However, she was pecked by an Australian rainbow lorikeet during a visit to a bird park in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in 2021, causing her to scream in a similar fashion to when she used to see Silvio Berlusconi at European Council summits. Back in Covid times, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro — who had dismissed the seriousness of the epidemic and criticized containment measures ordered by local governors, but also tested positive for the disease — was taking a walk while under quarantine at the presidential palace when he was bitten on the hand by a rhea. “This rhea represents us,” posted Margarida Salomão of the Workers’ Party. In 2009, then-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was bitten on the hand by a groundhog. Rumors that Bloomberg is being bitten on the hand continuously were unconfirmed at the time of going to press. Fo