Peanut, who has amassed more than half a million Instagram followers, was euthanized by officials to be tested for rabies.
Peanut, the Instagram-famous squirrel that was seized from its owner’s home Wednesday, has been euthanized by New York state officials.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation took Peanut, as well as a raccoon named Fred, on Wednesday after the agency learned the animals were “sharing a residence with humans, creating the potential for human exposure to rabies," it said in a joint statement with the Chemung County Department of Health.
Both Peanut and Fred were euthanized to test for rabies, the statement said. It was unclear when the animals were euthanized.
Peanut had been living with owner Mark Longo for seven years
Man. What a feel-bad story. There’s a certain kind of person who takes glee in destroying others’ joy and they will use any technicality to get the excuse to do so all while blathering “the law is the law, the law is the law.”
Seven years. What a shameful travesty.
Okay, I was initially totally against the DEC but reading the article really changed my mind. You need a license to own wild animals in NY. Ya know cause they should not be pets… also wildlife rehabilitation requires a license and training. Also rehabilitating means returning them to the wild. Not to mention an extra license and training for animals that are common carriers of rabies.
He has a squirrel for 7 years as a pet without a license with zero intention to rehabilitate his animals. He was using them to make money. Getting them to do tricks, wear hats and clothes. He essentially had a roadside zoo, but his customers were online. He says he was in the process of getting a license. He had the squirrel for 7 years, and was actively collecting more animals. This guy sucks, no wonder people were reporting him.
Oh man I don’t enjoy being that guy right now but for the love of all, It’s CUSTOMERS. Costumers are people who work in dress-up.
I’ve only seen this in the past few years, but it’s become such a common mistake. I don’t understand it.
Sorry, I mean you’re making a salient point about the lack of a license and all. Even so, if he’s been caring for the squirrel domestically for seven years, where do they think the supposed rabies would have come from? It doesn’t just manifest.
All these mistakes grind my gears, but this one is especially bad. Some of them make sense because of the way the word is pronounced.
Who is out there saying costumers instead of customers? Nobody says it like that.
Naw it’s all good thanks! I’m dyslexic so I swap the vowels, I’ve always done it. Lol
They recently obtained a raccoon. Which are one of the most common animals to get rabies. He also attempted to release the squirrel when it was 8 months old. It came back injured. It could have been infected then, rabies can lie dormant for years.
I feel like I’m going nuts, is nobody on lemmy actually reading this article? This dude turbo sucked.
Longo brought Peanut him home, ultimately caring for the squirrel for eight months before trying to release it back into the wild. He said Peanut returned to his porch a day and a half later with a broken bone sticking out of its tail, at which point Longo determined Peanut couldn’t survive in the wild alone and instead would move in with him.
Didn’t get him veterinary care though, because that would have resulted in his Cool Pet being taken away. What’s wrong with a little risk of sepsis and zero pain control for a serious injury if someone really, really wants to be a special boy??
A wildlife rehabilitator (Nessie) on TikTok pointed out that his squirrel and his raccoon would not have had access to veterinary care (ie, vaccination for rabies).
She also pointed out that showcasing wildlife in social media is currently unregulated - in person exhibitions requiring an expensive license to get. This is a bit of a loophole, and what that guy did is likely to get that loophole closed up, and impact sanctuaries that do operate within the current law while using social media platforms to fundraise.
Also, personally, the way he showcased the animals just seemed inappropriate - squirrels eating human food just seems problematic. Iirc he ran a domestic rescue, not a wildlife rescue, which is a different skill set. Wildlife rescuers avoid interacting with animals as much as possible. Animals aren’t toys and don’t have the same kinds of needs we do, and the fact they are cute shouldn’t complicate our emotions.
Social media is unregulated but owning them isn’t. He needed a license to keep them, which he didn’t have. And the “sanctuary” is just for domestics that was started last year. The website sells t shirts and options for donations. It seems like they got internet famous because of the squirrel and opened this as a way to make money.
Yeah - the more I look into it, the less sympathetic I am. There’s a lot of good reasons to have regulations for wildlife. A lot of “common sense” is just wrong (like the “mother birds abandon babies because of human scent”), and sometimes that gets animals killed unnecessarily. Folks assume because they know how to deal with a cat or a dog that squirrels and raccoons will be similar - they aren’t.
Legitimate wildlife rescues with ambassador animals don’t typically present them as pets. An animal being unreleasable is a fail state. A legitimate rescue will be trying to make the most out of a bad situation. When I’ve talked to keepers or watched vids online, they understand it as tragic that the animal will not be able to live its life independently - the fact that they can make money because people like getting to see cute animals is just trying to get something good out of it.
Squirrels aren’t domestic. They aren’t supposed to live with us.
[I’m not a wildlife expert, but I’ve shoveled shit as a volunteer at lots of different types of refuges and have chatted with many of the types of folks who run these places]
I read the article and can’t believe someone could read the same thing and come away thinking, “this guys sucks.”
You can’t believe people would be angry that someone illegally kept an animal an forced it to perform for his own profit?
You must be really unfamiliar with the history of animals in circus performances.
This would apply to anyone uploading a picture or video of their pet, no? All those pictures of sleeping cats today are coming from people forcing their pets to perform for their own profit. They even came up with a cute name to disguise this disgusting exploitation and indentured servitude: “caturday.”
It makes me sick.
It’s been interesting seeing people’s reactions to this versus Tiger King.
Yea, when it’s a tiger its bad but when its a squirrel it’s ok. Plus big cat rescue (Carroll Baskins rescue) actually has licenses, State organizations regularly send seized animals to them, and they have an active program to rehabilitate wild bobcats.
This is so true. I actually went there before Tiger King even aired. They were very transparent that their organization used to breed tigers and rent them for TV/advertisement usage. But in Tiger King they just show this crazy man ranting about how “She used to do this too, she’s just the same as us!” But like, they’re not fucking hiding it. They literally told us on the tour how they realized that doing things like using big cats for advertising brands (think like leopard in a high end jewelry ad, for example) just sort of drives people to view them as pets and seek them out. And whether folks agree or disagree with that isn’t really the point, my point is that BCR (even before Tiger King) was wildly transparent about their history and their transformation/changing of opinions over the years.
It actually sort of makes me angry with the documentary makers. Like I’m definitely upset with media illiterate folks only getting “Carol Baskin killed her husband” because Joe Exotic wouldn’t shut up about it. But like… Joe literally tried to hire a hitman. And that’s not a theory or a guess. He did it. And folks just eauate them. But the film makers didn’t really do a good job covering this aspect about BCR’s transparency. It just feels irresponsible to me I guess. There’s more but it’s not fresh in my mind any longer. I wanna say there was some stuff about people they interviewed that was weird. Like I think Carol’s husband’s old secretary that got replaced tried to steal or something? I don’t remember. But they just don’t include that context.
The only charge is “potential to spread rabies” and they killed the animal to test for that (for some reason). So, if the test comes back negative, they will make full repariations right?
No, the cruelty is the point. The kind of people who made this happen have common sense just like the rest of us, that 7-year-old squirrel didn’t have rabies. They refuse to make exceptions or use common sense because they specifically want to hurt others.
I feel like these are kneejerk reactions to the headline. Think with your brain not your heart (I’m not trying to be an ass, forget about the cutesy animals and think about this guy owning wild animals and exploiting them for money on social media) The cruelty is not the point. You can’t just own wild animals without a license and without veterinary care…
full repariations
And surely such reparations would take into account future lost revenue, as they would be expected to it this were a regular person against a corporation.
Surely.
Sadly I think the monetary value of a cat is like $15 reimbursed. I imagine a squirrel is worth even less.
How about the monetary value of a social media influencer with half a million followers
It’s because rabies infects the brains of animals, so that’s the tissue that is tested.
I’m wondering why the people who were caring for the animals didn’t just get them rabies shots in the first place.
to test for rabies, couldnt they have just observed the animal in some quarantine for the gestation period of the disease?
They could have, but if the animal had already bitten a human, that extra few weeks’ wait is dangerous.
No, rabies is an absolutely bizarre virus. The progression of the disease is highly variable. The person peanut bit could star displaying symptoms before peanut. Once symptoms show up, you are essentially dead. Rabies has one of the highest death rates of know human diseases. The only definitive way to test for rabies is testing brain tissue. The amount needed for a high confidence result is too much for the animal to survive. So the animal is always euthanized. That why having all pets that can be vaccinated, vaccinated is so important.
Rabies vaccine is only made for a handful of animals. For example a vaccine is made for domestic sheep but not for domestic goats. Goats and sheep are closely enough related that goats owners have their animals vaccinated using the sheep vaccinations but since they have not been officially tested, you can’t say the animals have been vaccinated for rabies in a legal capacity so the petting zoo has a big sign about the rabies risk in goats.
I think this is mostly a case on NY state’s sick of people ignoring their wild animal laws and with NYC especially they can’t allow for people to just keep whatever animal they want and think it’s okay. If Peanuts owner had been licensed as an actual wildlife rehab, it would have been different but wildlife are not pets even when they are friendly.
Unfortunately rabies testing requires samples of the brain. This is why if you are bitten by an animal you suspect of having rabies, a professional should catch it and test the animal. The tests that exist for diagnosis in living humans are not reliable.
In this case I didn’t open the story to see why they believed a domesticated squirrel needed to be tested.
Edit: somebody that didn’t interact with the animals complained they might have rabies?
That guy sucks for keeping wild animals without the proper certification and training resulting in no medical care for the animals.
At the same time I’m also skeptical of how the state handled it because I feel it’s important to remember that policies and how situations are handled can always use improvement.
For example, how did the investigator get bitten? Were they wearing proper protective gear and following procedure? Was he or she properly trained to detain animals like a squirrel? If the state is going to send people to confiscate wild animals a bite incident is a big fucking deal and there should be an internal investigation as to how that happened. For both the future safety of the employees and animals.
This whole situation sucks.
“What radicalised you?”
TBH this really shouldn’t radicalize you. This is what people are supposed to do when an animal bites somebody. The thing that was done incorrectly was creating a situation where an animal could bite a person.
Maybe the squirrel bit that guy because the squirrel knew deep down that guy was here to fuck up the squirrels life which he did by inserting himself into the situation.
They caused the animal to bite, they kinda deserve it, no?
Besides, they probably got vaccinated for rabies regardless? That’s the only thing you can do…
The bite is the fault of the handler and not the inspector.
The inspector probably did get vaccinated, the animal almost certainly never has, but vaccine isn’t guaranteed to work so to know if they need to be held longer or receive an additional inoculation they need to take a sample from the animal.
This would be my villain origin story when they are talking about “what drove him to commit atrocities”
