Uproar over a squirrel: Hundreds of thousands follow “Peanut” on social media. Now US officials have confiscated the animal.
A squirrel that is a social media star has now been confiscated by an American authority. “Peanut,” as its finder Mark Longo calls the animal, was confiscated by officers during a house search. “The DEC [Amt für Umweltschutz] came to my house and searched it without a warrant to find the squirrel,” Longo told The Associated Press. “I was treated like I was a drug dealer and they were looking for guns and drugs.”
New York State officials then took Peanut away. The squirrel has had hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok since Longo first introduced it to the public seven years ago. According to him, the animal’s mother had been hit and he was looking after the orphan. He actually wanted to release the animal again after seven months, but it returned to his porch. At the time, he assumed the animal couldn’t survive on its own and kept it in the house. When he posted a video of “Peanut” playing with his cat, the squirrel became famous overnight. Television stations and the newspaper “USA Today” also reported on the animal roommate.
But “Peanut” and Longo apparently don’t just have friends. A DEC spokesman said in a statement that the agency launched an investigation after there were “multiple reports from the public about the potentially unsafe housing of wild animals that could carry rabies and the illegal keeping of wild animals as pets.” In addition to “Peanut”, a raccoon named “Fred” also lives in Longo’s house. The mechanic also runs an animal shelter called “P’Nuts Freedom Farm Animal Sanctuary”. There are said to be 300 animals in it, including horses, goats and alpacas. He was aware that he was violating regulations by keeping a wild animal at home. He started to register “Peanut” as an animal for education and upbringing.
Longo assumes that neighbors or people who don’t begrudge him his success have informed the authorities. “To the people who did this… Thank you for tearing a family apart and destroying any hope of survival for our nonprofit,” he wrote on Instagram. His fans support him. “The person who did this had no motive other than hate. They had so much hate that they didn’t care what happened to ‘Peanut,'” one user wrote. Another wrote: “I pray you get him back.”
He fears that “Peanut” has already been euthanized by the authorities. “I don’t know if ‘Peanut’ is still alive,” he said in a telephone interview Thursday. “I don’t know where he is.”
