Most of you have heard about P’nut the squirrel and Fred the raccoon by now.
For those who haven’t, 7 years ago, Mark and Daniela Longo rescued a baby squirrel after they witnessed its mother get run over by a car in New York City. They took the squirrel to their rural Pine City home. Since then, the squirrel, named P’nut, has become an internet sensation, gaining thousands of followers across social media.
Wednesday, officers from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Chemung county health officials raided the Longo’s home and seized P’nut and Fred the raccoon. By Friday, they had euthanized both animals. The reasoning, at least as far as I’m concerned, for the euthanization was more than a bit suspect; they wanted to test for rabies.
I am a bit torn by this one. NY has some fairly strict laws regarding the keeping of ‘wild’ and exotic animals as pets. Since January of 2005, the state has prohibited the possession of wild and exotic animals as pets. Unless you are a Zoo, wildlife rehabber or a research facility, you cannot legally possess a wild or exotic animal in the state. § 11-0512 of the NY Consolidated environmental laws spells it all out.
That said, these people had P’nut for 7 years, and now, all of a sudden, it’s a problem? The speed between seizure and euthanization also bugs me. The claim is that P’nut bit someone involved in the seizure, hence the need for rabies testing. The issue with that is a simple one: squirrels rarely, and I mean vanishingly rarely, get rabies. Had Fred the raccoon bit someone, I could see the urgency, ‘coons are a known vector for rabies.