Peanut The Squirrel should be alive right now, because it's improbable the fully domesticated animal had rabies ... so says an infectious disease expert.
Category
✨
PeopleTranscript
00:00Well, Mark Longo is still waiting for answers about Peanut the Squirrel.
00:05We told you about this saga that's going on in upstate New York.
00:09Peanut, who is a viral internet sensation,
00:13was confiscated from Mark's home after being with him for seven years.
00:18And the New York state officials that took Peanut euthanized him
00:23and said that they had to because they needed to test him for rabies
00:27because one of the agents who took Peanut allegedly was bitten.
00:31So it just felt like, why did they jump to that conclusion?
00:34And Mark himself told us, look, over the seven years that Peanut had been living in his home,
00:40he had been bitten a number of times.
00:42Seven times.
00:43Seven times he said?
00:44Yep.
00:45And obviously Mark is totally fine, never ever had any symptoms of rabies.
00:49So it seems like that's a question that could have been asked.
00:53It seems like there are a lot of questions.
00:55Before you get to the expert, because this is important.
00:57Again, the first thing they asked this guy, Mark, was,
01:01do you have cameras in the house?
01:03And Mark and his wife do OnlyFans, and it's X-rated.
01:07And there are people who think they went there because they were really concerned about that,
01:12not so much the squirrel.
01:13Right.
01:14That's certainly how it looks to some people.
01:17But this rabies thing is really troubling because we spoke to an expert,
01:23someone who has studied rabies in animals since the 80s,
01:27and he told us there has never been, this is the doctor we spoke to, Dr. Edward Rensimer,
01:31never been a documented case of squirrel to human rabies.
01:36In his words, it is highly unlikely that Peanut had rabies.
01:41Now, they had to euthanize him because you can't test animals for rabies while they're alive.
01:48I believe they actually take brain matter to test for it,
01:52and it just seems like if they had asked some questions,
01:57and that's what Dr. Rensimer said to us,
01:59also the fact that Peanut was living indoors for seven years.
02:03Makes it almost impossible.
02:05Right. There would be no way for him to contract rabies.
02:08So this is unfortunate, but the New York state officials have yet to reveal the results of that testing.
02:15They haven't said anything.
02:16We've been calling them like crazy, and they've never returned our calls.
02:19They're not doing anything.
02:20But there are some politicians in New York who are outraged,
02:24some who are also animal advocates who are outraged by what happened to Mark Longo and his wife.
02:31So we spoke to Assemblyman Jake Blumenkranz,
02:34and he's one of these people who's just been really affected by this,
02:37but he's actually proposed some change.
02:40So he is proposing a Peanuts law,
02:42and the crux of what he's trying to be put into law is that these agencies have to wait 72 hours
02:49before euthanizing the animals,
02:51and he wants a lot more just different checks and balances with the DEC
02:56as far as just not moving right away to euthanizing animals.
03:00And it's weird because obviously, I mean, we're just the media.
03:04The DEC, the governor's office.
03:06Department of Environmental Conservation, yeah.
03:08Yes, and the governor's office haven't been answering us,
03:10but he told me yesterday that they've reached out,
03:13and they're not getting any answers as well.
03:15It's pretty much radio silent from both organizations.
03:18They're just being told, yeah, we just did what went by the letter of the law essentially,
03:23and he's saying they're getting nothing but that.
03:26There's something troubling me about this.
03:28If you worked for one of these departments,
03:31and you were sent out to a house to grab a squirrel and a raccoon,
03:37if that was really the reason you went out.
03:39That's why you have a search warrant.
03:41Right. If that's really why you went out,
03:43and you're going to take a squirrel,
03:45how are you going to get that squirrel in your hands to capture it?
03:50Wouldn't you wear gloves?
03:52Absolutely.
03:53If that's the point of it, wouldn't they be armed with gloves or something
03:58so they wouldn't get bitten?
04:00You're taking the animals because you feel like they're a danger,
04:03so why wouldn't you be dressed in a way that reflects that you're…
04:08Yeah, and they're domesticated animals,
04:10and if these people are coming at this animal and it's a squirrel,
04:15you're going to think, that could bite me.
04:17I'd have the gloves on, I'd have one of those net things over my face.
04:21If that's really why they went out to the house,
04:25wouldn't they have gloves or something so they wouldn't get bitten?
04:30And it just makes me feel like, was this really the reason?
04:34Why were they in that house for five hours, according to Mark?
04:37Why were they in that house for five hours?
04:39If they weren't in for five hours,
04:41it would be nice to get a call back from one of these agencies
04:45where the public information officer hasn't said crap about this.
04:49Nobody has.
04:51But was it really to get this squirrel?
04:54Because if it was, you'd all have gloves on.
04:57By the way, no citation issued to Mark for having an illegal wild animal.
05:04And they say it's illegal because they got a search warrant saying it was illegal.
05:07My name is Jordi, I'm from New Jersey,
05:09and I think that this story is absolutely ridiculous.
05:12I don't know why that random lady thought it was her place to snitch on this squirrel
05:17that wasn't even feral.
05:19It was raised from birth by this man.
05:21And I don't know why all of a sudden people care about animals in houses
05:26when I know we all watched Tiger King a couple years ago
05:29and we know that people have lions and different animals in their houses.
05:34Freaks all over. No one's doing anything about them.
05:37I am having a hard time believing this was really about a squirrel.
05:40I am having a hard time believing it.