House search in the USA Police confiscate star squirrel "Peanut"
The squirrel "Peanut" is a star on social media. He has lived with Mark Longo as a pet for seven years. But now the animal has been confiscated during a house search.
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- The squirrel "Peanut" is a star on social media.
- Now the animal has been confiscated during a house search in New York.
- Longo assumes that neighbors or people who didn't like his success informed the authorities.
The squirrel "Peanut" is a star on social media. But now the animal has been confiscated during a house search in New York. "The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) came to my house and searched it without a warrant to find the squirrel," the squirrel's finder Mark Longo told the AP news agency.
Longo continues: "I was treated as if I was a drug dealer and they were looking for weapons and drugs." In the end, the officers took "Peanut" with them.
"Peanut" has been a pet for seven years
The squirrel has hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok since Longo first showed it to the public seven years ago. The animal's mother is said to have been hit by a car and he then took care of the orphan.
He wanted to abandon the animal after seven months, but it kept returning to his porch. Eventually, he took the animal in as a pet.
"Peanut" became famous overnight when Longo published a video of the animal playing with his cat. TV stations and the newspaper "USA Today" also reported on it.
Authorities launched an investigation
However, the two are not just making themselves popular. A spokesperson for the DEC said in a statement that the agency launched an investigation after there were "multiple reports from the public about the potential unsafe housing of wild animals that could carry rabies and the illegal keeping of wild animals as pets."
The squirrel isn't the only animal in Longo's life. A raccoon named "Fred" also lives in his house. In addition to his job as a mechanic, Longo runs an animal shelter. There are said to be 300 animals there. These include horses, goats and alpacas.
Longo was aware that he would be breaking the rules if he kept a wild animal at home. He had started to register "Peanut" as an animal for education and training.
"I don't know if 'Peanut' is still alive"
He assumes that neighbors or people who didn't want him to succeed informed the authorities: "To the people who did this... Thank you for tearing a family apart and destroying any hope of our non-profit organization surviving," Longo writes on Instagram.
The fans support him. One user wrote under the post: "The person who did this had no motive other than hate. They had so much hate that they didn't care what happened to 'Peanut'". Another wrote: "I pray you get him back".
Longo fears that "Peanut" was euthanized by the authorities. "I don't know if 'Peanut' is still alive," he said in a telephone interview on Thursday, "I don't know where he is."