Peanut and Fred: When Government Tramples the Little Man — and the Smallest Creatures

By Selwyn Duke

Arguably the biggest story leading up to Election Day has been the plight of Peanut the squirrel and Fred the raccoon. As many know, both these tame rescue animals were seized from their owners in a shock-and-awe raid last Wednesday and killed by New York State authorities. Making the story far bigger is that Peanut, sometimes spelled P’Nut or PNUT, was a social-media star. (His Instagram account has 540,000 followers. This means he has more political influence in death than I do in life!)

Of course, some may say this is overblown. How many human beings, after all, are murdered on any given day due to bad government policy? In reality, though, the outrage is not only understandable from a human standpoint, but is justified by deeper issues involved.

A Non-human Interest Story

Adding perspective to this case Monday is Mike McDaniel, an ex-police division commander who supervised, among other things, animal control. “Americans [most anyway] know there’s a difference between animals and human beings,” he writes, “but they love their furry pals nonetheless.” Moreover, putting a sympathetic face — bare or furry — to a story engages people’s emotions.

But then there’s this: Government isn’t raiding illegal aliens’ homes with an eye toward deportation.

Instead, the establishment transports them into our country’s interior and gives them taxpayer-funded government benefits.

Government isn’t swarming the dangerous streets and going Roman on the malevolent criminals preying on innocent Americans.

Instead, it facilitates their evil with a revolving-door (in)justice regime.

Then there’s something else, however, a warning Elon Musk related via a meme. “If they will raid a house for a squirrel,” it goes, “they’re sure as s*** going to come after you.”

Peanut Brains in Government

And execute a raid they did. Reason reports on the story:

Peanut the Squirrel was an internet sensation, captivating hundreds of thousands of internet followers with videos of his charming antics with his owner, Mark Longo. That changed last Wednesday, when the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) raided Longo’s home, seizing Peanut and another pet, a raccoon named Fred. The two animals were euthanized soon after. Longo claims that DEC informed the media about the animals’ deaths before they told P’nuts Freedom Farm — Longo’s animal sanctuary nonprofit, named after Peanut.

“Despite our passionate outcry for compassion, the agency chose to ignore our pleas, leaving us in deep shock and grief,” Longo wrote on Instagram. “To add to our anguish, they informed the media of their decision before even notifying P’nuts Freedom Farm, his loving home.

… A spokesperson for the DEC told the Associated Press that they seized the animals after receiving “multiple reports from the public about the potentially unsafe housing of wildlife that could carry rabies and the illegal keeping of wildlife as pets.”

“Two days ago, ten to fifteen DEC officers raided my home for a raccoon and a squirrel,” Longo told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo on Friday. “We used resources from this state to kill a squirrel and raccoon and raid my house as if I was a drug dealer. We have resources to kill a squirrel and a raccoon but we can’t fix the major bridges down the street?”

Note that Longo had actually saved Peanut’s life. He took the squirrel in as an infant after the creature’s mother was struck and killed by a car. He also tried returning Peanut to the forest. The squirrel came back, beaten up, and ran into the house when the door was opened.

The “Least Free State” Strikes Again

Perhaps it’s not surprising that the Empire State is acting imperiously, given a study showing it’s the least-free state. It proved it, too, with Longo. He says the government agents raiding his home even inquired about the immigration status of his wife, who’s from Germany. (Yes, because, of course, NY is so diligent about ferreting out immigration-law violators.) Moreover, Longo states the government justified Peanut’s and Fred’s euthanizing by claiming the squirrel bit an agent. He asserts that this is a lie, saying that the DEC officers were professionals who wore gloves.

Really, though, was all this heavy-handedness necessary? Sure, NY law does require “people to get a license if they wish to own a wild animal,” reports CNN. “Longo has said he was working to get Peanut … certified as an educational animal.” And since conservatives do emphasize rule of law regarding, for example, crime and migration, I won’t pooh-pooh NY’s animal-control regulations. But I will mirror Jesus and say something else.

Man was not made for the law — the law was made for man.

Longo is not Pablo Escobar. Why couldn’t the DEC give him a call, or send one officer to his home, and aid him with the certification? Maybe, the aforementioned McDaniel suggests, the reason is the DEC’s director (picture below). Note the communist-like uniform.

Who else thinks that squirrel and raccoon murderer Captain Karen Przyklek looks an awful lot like Aunt Lydia? pic.twitter.com/l1i28shspq

— Shannon Says (@Shannon_Says1) November 3, 2024

A Portent of Things to Come?

The bottom line is that good governments don’t engage in overkill. They don’t send jack-booted storm-troopers to non-threatening Americans’ homes (as was done with Roger Stone and Trump at Mar-a-Lago). They don’t, to employ a twist on an old Chinese saying, use a hatchet to remove a fly from a fellow citizen’s forehead. Tyrants do that.

In this vein, commenters under McDaniel’s article apparently agree. What happened here had little “to do with a pet squirrel and all to do with government showing muscle,” wrote one.

“If Mark and his wife had resisted, they could have been killed,” he added. “Think about that. Peanut the Squir[re]l was investigated more that any Epstein client.”

Yet there’s another, unmentioned factor. With more than a half-million Instagram followers, Longo surely was making great money with Peanut. (This he likely used to, in part, fund his animal-rescue operation.) Some state bureaucrats no doubt realized this and, well, I know people: They could’ve been intensely jealous. This is especially true with leftists, who, studies have shown, are especially money-hungry and envious. And make no mistake, some bureaucrats relish nothing more than quashing a private citizen’s grand success.

Whatever the case, for sure is that left-wingers have again proven that despite all their talk, they are devout Culture of Death cultists.

                     This article was originally published at The New American.