Peanut the squirrel, who has over 500K followers on social media, was seized from his owner, but a petition has been launched to return his “best friend.”
On October 30, Mark Longo’s Instagram-famous pet squirrel, Peanut, was seized by New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).
“The DEC came to my house and raided my house without a search warrant to find a squirrel!” Longo said. “I was treated as if I was a drug dealer and they were going for drugs and guns.”
Peanut and his owner Longo have been IG’s dynamic duo for seven years. They became inseparable when Longo rescued Peanut after seeing his mother get hit by a car.
After eight months of recovery care in his home, Longo released Peanut back into the wild. However, his companion returned shortly after.
“A day and a half later I found him sitting on my porch missing half of his tail with his bone sticking out,” Longo said. It was then that he realized his little friend would likely lack the survival skills he’d need for the outdoors.
Once Longo began posting Peanut to social media, the squirrel quickly gained fans for its spunky personality. However, the internet was also the main factor in why Peanut was seized by the DEC.
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A representative for the DEC stated that the agency began an investigation after they received “multiple reports from the public about the potentially unsafe housing of wildlife that could carry rabies and the illegal keeping of wildlife as pets.”
“Well internet, you won,” Longo posted on Instagram. “You took one of the most amazing animals away from me because of your selfishness. To the group of people who called DEC, there’s a special place in hell for you.”
Per New York’s state law, citizens are prohibited from owning a wild animal without a license — which Longo said he was in the process of completing before Peanut was taken.
At this time of writing, Longo, heartbroken, doesn’t know if his companion has been euthanized or not. “I don’t know if Peanut is alive,” he said. “I don’t know where he is.”
He has launched a GoFundMe, though, as well as a petition for Peanut to be able to return to “his rightful home.”
Longo hasn’t been the only influencer to have been caught by authorities for his interaction with wildfire, though. In October, an Instagram model faced charges up to $26,000 for feeding a crocodile an entire rotisserie chicken.