Peanut the Squirrel, a social media star, was seized by the New York government and then euthanized triggering major outrage on social media especially from GOP leaders — two days before the election. “The government should leave people and their animals alone,” Elon Musk wrote on X commenting on the report of how seven-year-old Peanut was seized and then killed.
Peanut and raccoon Fred were taken from Mark Longo by the State Department of Environmental Conservation and the agency said it had received complaints that those two were being kept illegally and unsafely. The state law requires people to get a license if they wish to own a wild animal.
Longo said he never saw Peanut bite anyone and not even when the raid was going on. He also said he was working to get Peanut — also known as P’Nut or PNUT — certified as an educational animal.
“Honestly, this still kind of feels surreal, that the state that I live in actually targeted me and took two of the most beloved animals on this planet away, didn’t even quarantine them. They took them from my house and just killed them,” he said.
Longo said he started taking care of P’Nut after its mother was hit by a car seven years ago. And Fred was dropped off on his doorstep a few months ago.
Donald Trump’s other aide Robert F Kennedy Jr, a wildlife enthusiast, posted, “Are these the same guys that killed my whale and my bear? And, what happened to the head? Just asking for a friend.”
Years ago, RFK Jr cut off the head of a whale carcass on the beach near their Cape Cod family home and then drove the whale’s head back to New York in the family’s minivan. An investigation into this started after he joined Trump’s team leaving his own presidential race.
Kennedy Jr also confessed that he dumped a dead bear in New York’s Central Park. He said he wanted to take the dead animal home but there was a change in schedule and so he decided to discard the carcass in Central Park — along with an old bicycle making it look like a cycling accident.