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.
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.
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]
Yeah agreed.
These people suck, and got those animals killed unnecessarily.
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.
Autocorrect says it like that, and it’s an easy one to miss if you aren’t paying close attention.
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.
Yeah, like how common loose instead of lose, and rouge instead of rogue is.
Well… It’s English. Y’all’s vowels are 90 % schwa and half of the rest is completely dependent on the accent.
“Cuh-stuh-muh”. Same vowel. If English’s spelling was to be redone, I vote for a hangul-style writing system but with the vowels only implied: kx/stx/mx.
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.
Oh yeah, that fucking show was bullshit. For whatever reason they decided Carole made a better “bad guy”. Even though she was actually a victim, and they lied to her about the direction the show was going in. Even though her life story seems to be amazing. The things she has survived and is still making it her life’s mission to help big cats, it’s just awe inspiring.
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.
In general, I would suspect most folks uploading cat pics have their cat legally and hopefully have them vaccinated for rabies. Two pretty big differences lol.
Everyone is really leaning on the legality aspect as if that determines the morality of keeping a squirrel as a pet or posting said pet on social media.
Also, how is this squirrel going to be infected with rabies after living indoors for 7 years? By everyone’s measure here, every squirrel should be euthanized since any one of them could potentially have rabies at any time under any circumstances, and they all live in close proximity to humans.
How does one verify the squirrel was actually inside for 7 years after it bites them?
How does one verify that any mammal they come into contact with doesn’t have rabies? Apparently, it’s an epidemic, and anyone and everyone could have it.
🚩🚩🚩 Penalty! Moving goal posts! Shepard is attempting to change the discussion from being bitten to merely coming in contact with!
He took an animal from the wild. Domesticated animals are different from wild animals. He was also still taking animals from the wild as seen by the most recent racoon he kept as a pet. Wild animals require licenses for a reason.