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Transcript:
I grew up in a house in the woods, and in the autumn we faced a particularly strange threat. While walking through the forest, sometimes we would hear a swishing sound–swish swish swish–coming from the leaves overhead. That sound was a warning to get the hell away from the nearest tree, because we were about to get fragged by an acorn flung at our heads from a squirrel 50 feet above us. That’s right: squirrels get so territorial that they will 360 no-scope you with a nut just for walking past their favorite tree. They threw the acorns so hard that they’d occasionally dent our cars. Squirrels are assholes. They’re like evil rats with fluffier tails and better PR.
And that, my friends, is why I am GLAD that Kamala Harris ordered the Deep State to assassinate the Instagram star known as P’nut the Squirrel.
Okay, so I’m actually making this video on election day here in the United States, in part as a way to not think about what’s going to happen tonight and tomorrow. I would like to say it’s going to be a blowout because Donald Trump is a convicted felon with many rape accusations who is openly bragging about how he’s going to become a dictator but hey, I thought the same thing in 2016 so yeah I’m going to spend today thinking about an Instagram-famous pet squirrel.
If you’ve missed this story because unlike me you are NOT terminally online, allow me to fill you in. And just a content warning: no matter how stupid you think this story is, you will not be prepared for how stupid it actually gets. And dark! It gets very stupid and very dark.
Okay. Mark Longo is a man who lives in Western New York state and claims that about eight years ago, he saw a squirrel get run over by a car and noticed its baby (known as a “kit”), who ran up to him and straight up his leg. He took the kit home because all the wildlife rehabilitation facilities were too busy, so he nursed the baby back to health and released him in the backyard. Unfortunately the kit was attacked, and so he and his partner decided to keep him as an indoor pet squirrel. Thus was “P’nut” born, as they filmed delightful videos of the kit wearing his silly outfits and eating his little snacks.
At some point, they realized that Mark himself was, um, hot. And so the focus of the videos stopped being P’nut and started being Mark wearing tight pants and flexing. This led to Mark starting “Squirrel Daddy,” an OnlyFans account where he does what OnlyFans models do. Way to get that nut, Mark.
P’nut and Mark developed a following of millions of fans on social media, and so it came as a shock last week when the world learned that New York state officials raided their home, captured P’nut, and had him euthanized. They also took and euthanized Longo’s pet raccoon “Fred” but I guess he must not have a social media presence because nobody gives a shit about him, so fuck him I guess.
Longo was naturally quite upset about this, and so he took to conservative media outlets like the New York Post to complain that he was treated like a “terrorist” and that all this happened thanks to online activist trolls who pushed the state officials to act.
From there, conservatives on social media picked up on the story, with Elon Musk Xitting that “Government overreach kidnapped an orphan squirrel and executed him.”
And thus P’nut the Squirrel became a far-right story of an innocent life murdered by Big Government. Oh, because I know that it might be hard to remember these days, when the Republican candidate for president is bragging about how he helped put the government in charge of women’s bodily autonomy, but Republicans are the party of small government. So they’re very upset that the government murdered this poor, innocent fuzzy pet who did absolutely nothing wrong.
So here’s the thing: they’re correct that little P’nut did nothing wrong. Yes, squirrels are violent acorn-hurling jerks but joking aside, I love all animals and I even love squirrels. But my love of animals includes knowledge that most animals are not pets. And so we must accept the fact that Mark Longo DID do something wrong. In fact, he did a lot of things wrong.
That may surprise you seeing as P’nut looked so happy and he managed to live indoors for so many years now. But there’s more to animal welfare than being able to get the animal to wear a cowboy hat for an Instagram video. I end all my videos with a clip of my dog, Indy, always looking happy and healthy and sometimes dressed up in silly costumes! But what you don’t see is all the stuff I do behind the scenes: he has an annual check-up at his vet; he has annual vaccinations for leptospirosis, bordetella, and influenza. He takes monthly medications to prevent heartworm, fleas, and ticks. He gets a 3-year vaccine for distemper, hepatitis, parainfluenza, and parvo. When he displays odd behaviors like last year when he suddenly had dizzy spells (he’s fine, it was a temporary condition), his vet sees him and prescribes him appropriate medication.
And most importantly, every three years he gets a vaccine to prevent rabies. That is SO important that the city of Oakland requires I show proof that his vaccine is up to date and he wears a collar with his license number. Doggy daycares and groomers ask to see that proof before he’s allowed inside. Why? Because rabies is highly infectious and almost 100% fatal in humans.
Rabies is an absolutely terrifying virus that infects the nervous system. It’s maybe the closest thing to a zombie virus we have, because it removes animals’ innate fear, makes them violent, and causes them to produce excess saliva, which leads to an increased chance they will bite another animal and thereby infect them with rabies, too.
Rabies can infect all warm-blooded species and has even evolved to be able to infect some cold-blooded animals. In humans, it causes delirium, an intense fear of drinking water or even swallowing, and sometimes the same aggression that can occur in other animals. Only a handful of people have ever survived it. It is a horrible, painful, slow way to die. We have a vaccine, but it must be administered within days of being bitten, before the virus has a chance to take hold. It requires at least two shots but usually four if you’ve never had the vaccine before, it may need a booster three years later just to be sure the virus is contained, and it can cause a bunch of painful side effects. Oh and here in the United States it costs about 500 Freedom Bucks to get it.
That’s why most states, including New York where P’nut lived, have laws against keeping wild animals in your home without a license. When the state officials came to take P’nut, he bit one of the workers. Because Longo was keeping him illegally, P’nut had never even seen a vet, let alone gotten a rabies vaccine. The chance that he had rabies was very low, but not zero: yes, he had been inside for nearly eight years but a few months ago Longo illegally brought the aforementioned wild raccoon into the house. Raccoons are, like squirrels, a known common vector for rabies.
There is no rabies test for animals that can be performed without euthanizing the animal first. In order to definitively rule out the virus, you absolutely must have a cross-section of the animal’s brain. Not-so-fun fact: I learned that when I was a kid, because my beloved outdoor cat was dying and had to be taken to the vet, and we couldn’t get the body back to bury her because she bit the vet, didn’t have a rabies vaccine, and her head had to be removed and sent to a facility for testing.
You weren’t expecting this story to get this dark, were you? I warned you!
So no, this was not a case of government overreach. This is a case of Mark Longo putting his own selfish desires–for companionship? For internet fame? For OnlyFans money? Whatever–above P’nut’s needs. Here are the mistakes he made:
First, he should have called animal control or taken the kit directly to a licensed wildlife rescue. They would know exactly how to rehabilitate him correctly, which would mean not just keeping him alive as Longo did but preparing for him to be released back into the wild where he belongs.
Failing that, Longo could have gone to his local permitting office and discussed options for getting a license to keep P’nut. This would have stopped him from making his third mistake, which was not taking P’nut to a veterinarian.
The final mistake he made was exploiting P’nut for internet points. Had he not posted him online to the point of building a massive audience, literally no one at New York’s Departments of Environmental Conservation and Health would have ever known about P’nut, let alone come to take him away.
It’s a funny meme these days to make fun of people who constantly worry about “funny” behaviors in videos people post about their pets. Like, “that’s not amusing, that Godzilla is actually displaying signs of severe stress.” But in this case, the worrywarts were right. Wild animals belong in the wild, and Mark Longo brought this entire thing down on himself. I’d like to think he’s learned his lesson from this but seeing as how he apparently has opened up P’Nuts Freedom Farm Animal Sanctuary, I’m not so sure. Please don’t reward him with your views on Instagram or, my god, your dollars on OnlyFans. There are other, more responsible, better educated, more ethical wildlife rescuers to jerk it to.
Jesus Christ, what a sentence.
