Fans are saying goodbye to Peanut the squirrel and Fred the raccoon.
Two days after the animals’ owner, Mark Longo, said they had been seized by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), the agency confirmed to NBC News that the critters had been euthanized to test for rabies.
The animals were taken Oct. 30 after DEC officials learned they were “sharing a residence with humans, creating the potential for human exposure to rabies,” the agency said in a joint statement with the Chemung County Department of Health. The statement also said Peanut bit one of the officials involved in the investigation.
The DEC began looking into the animals’ living situation after it 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,” the agency said in a statement to the Associated Press.
Longo, who operates a wildlife shelter called P’Nuts Freedom Farm Animal Sanctuary, tearfully reacted to the news on social media alongside his wife, Dani.
