And how.

The murder of Peanut the Squirrel and Fred the Raccoon by the goons of New York State is an important and revealing story, not least because those who enjoy ill-treating animals smoothly advance to ill-treating people*.

Oh, but you’re worried about rabies? New York State has an accelerating rate of tuberculosis because “open borders” means no one has to undergo the health tests that I, as a reasonably disease-free Canadian and legal immigrant, had to go through. And indeed who’s really rabid here? Peanut and Fred? Or the foaming-at-the-mouth bureaucrats? At least in the more general sense of “extremely violent” and “going to extreme lengths” (Webster’s).

What explains such a perverse government priority? From a commenter at Ann Althouse’s website:

The squirrel was seen at the Capitol on January 6th.

But I wonder too if the fate of Peanut and Fred is not a metaphor for – and indeed a fearful premonition of – what is about to engulf America on Tuesday and in the days that follow. As you can see in that video retweeted by Elon Musk, Peanut provided hours of harmless pleasure to his over half-a-million followers on InstaGram – all fun and games, until a thug state decided to take him out – and that was that.

It’s pitiful to see defendants of the squirrel-killers (whose names should be known) make the case that the state executions were “legal”. That is not the distinction that applies here. Me exactly thirteen years ago – November 2011:

In my book, I also quote the writer George Jonas, back when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were revealed to be burning down the barns of Quebec separatists: With his characteristic insouciance, the Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau responded that, if people were so bothered by illegal barn-burning by the Mounties, perhaps he would make it legal. Jonas pointed out that burning barns isn’t wrong because it’s illegal, it’s illegal because it’s wrong. A society that no longer understands that distinction is in deep trouble.

In the world they’re building before your eyes, you’re the squirrel and they’re the “conservationists”. Vote accordingly.

*[See, for example, the British state, which has just transferred Tommy Robinson to a prison with a forty per cent Muslim population and in which (during a previous incarceration) the Islamic gangs that run the place have already beaten the crap out of him. Much of the UK, US, Canada, etc are institutionally evil and need to be put down the way New York put down Peanut.]

Exactly, precisely so.

SIDE NOTE: Not that it matters terribly in view of, well, everything, but if the NY Post has it right, Mark Logan spells/spelled it P’nut. I’ll probably weave drunkenly betwixt the two spellings, but you’ll know what I’m talking about anyway, I trust.

P’nut the Squirrel’s grieving owner says he was treated like a ‘terrorist’ in 5-hour raid by NY state
An upstate man whose beloved squirrel was cruelly killed by the state said he was treated like a “terrorist” when 10 government agents descended on his home during a five-hour raid. Mark Longo, whose pet P’nut captured the hearts of 3 million social media users, was stunned when a convoy of vehicles carrying officials from the state departments of Environmental Conservation and Health arrived at his Pine City home Wednesday.

Longo, 34, cared for “P’Nut” for more than seven years, rescuing him when his mother was hit by a car.

“We rehabbed him for eight months, we released him for a day and a half, but he ended up getting attacked. He never developed the instincts to survive outside,” Longo told The Post.

P’nut slept in his own room in their house in Pine City, just south of Elmira, NY.

Fred arrived four months ago, after being dropped off at their front door, and split time between an outdoor enclosure and a room in their residence.

P’nut and Fred were targeted, and not other animals living on the 350-acre property, because they lived indoors.

P’nut was a star on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Even Elon Musk paid tribute to him on X today.

One post said, “President @realDonaldTrump will save the squirrels” and another lamented, “Government overreach kidnapped an orphan squirrel and executed him.”

“My phone is blowing up from people around the country saying how much they loved P’nut,” Longo said. “I have people who call me and cry more than I do.”

Crucial bits coming up, boldface mine.

The DEC said in a statement obtained by WETM that the raid was in response to complaints about Fred, the raccoon, but Longo claimed they used him as an excuse to get P’nut.

“The only time I ever talked to the DEC prior to this was when they got complaints from anonymous people on the internet for P’nut about five or six months ago and that was before Fred,” he said. “They used Fred as their go-to to get into my house.”

The DEC claimed P’nut bit one of its officials on the hand during the raid, but Longo said he did not witness that and that the officials’ hands were heavily protected.

“I watched everybody put gloves on before they entered my house. They had gloves that you get an eagle to land on,” he said.

Re: those last two boldfaced items, the DEC pussyfarts are quite obviously lying. Re: the first two, the cowardly anonymous complainants ought never to know another day’s peace for the rest of their worthless lives as far as I’m concerned. Which, to that end:

There appears to be some question as to whether this Keasler bint is actually one of the aforementioned complainants, although Twitchy questions the questioners:

UPDATE:

There are some people claiming it’s not her, although nuking all of her socials does not usually indicate innocence BUT we’re fair so we thought we’d share, just in case:

Follows, a vid from a friend of Keasler’s who makes a not entirely convincing case that she didn’t do it, but fair enough. This evil bitch, on the other hand, is incontrovertibly guilty as sin.

Gee, SHE doesn’t look like she has a lot to compensate for via killing people’s beloved pets, does she? Just what is it with these jackbooted thugs’ compulsion to kill pets, anyhow? I copped the above image from the reliably brilliant John Carter, Warlord of Barsoom, who has plenty to say in his own right about this abominable mess.

Squirrel!
Safety first means nothing is safe.

This isn’t the first time that the dead hand of the zombie state has murdered innocent animal friends for the crime of being cared for without a permit.

The obvious line to take on this is that the government can’t seem to prevent illegal migrants from pouring across our various borders (indeed, it subsidizes them), while it will go all hands on deck to assassinate an illegal squirrel and his raccoon friend, but this is just anarchotyranny for you. This story isn’t really about the prefix of that portmanteau. It’s about the suffix.

We live in a society in which a vengeful busybody on the other side of the country can anonymously harness the implacable machinery of the state to ruin the lives of people they’ve never met, who are generally powerless to do anything to obtain satisfaction from the faceless bullies hiding within the miasma of the permanent bureaucracy.

We live in this kind of society because we have allowed our natural liberties to be nibbled away at, a little bit here and a little bit there, until there is practically nothing left of them. Like Gulliver, we are held down by thousands of tiny threads, a net of laws and regulations, all of them enacted ‘for our safety’.

We have put Safety First, and if safety comes first, it necessarily follows that everything else comes after safety. There is no price too high for safety, and so we pay everything for it.

No one believes that Peanut’s death made the world any safer, including the anonymous stool pigeon that sicced the NYDEC on him, or the mouth-breathing toughs sent by the NYDEC.

Peanut’s death was about power. The state’s goons got to rip apart someone’s house and snuff out the lives of helpless cute animals, which made them feel powerful, and the snitch got to snicker from the sidelines, which made her feel powerful.

Safety is just the excuse. It is a very effective excuse, one that the managerial state and its cultists and clients in the general population adore, because it morally disarms all opposition to their tyranny. It gives them all the cover they need. “I’m doing this because I like ripping the wings off of butterflies” doesn’t have quite the same ring as “I’m doing this to keep you safe from the butterflies”. No one has ever been hurt by a butterfly, you say? Well, perhaps, but you never know. If it saves even one life!

This plague of safetyism infects everything.

Indeed it does. Trust me when I assure you that you really, really don’t want to miss a single word of Jeddak Carter’s typically dead-on essay, folks. As for that fat Karenness in the frumpy, frowsy neo-Gestapo threads pictured above, may her office phone be ringing off the fucking hook tomorrow morning with calls from righteously pissed-off people who are definitely NOT friends of either her or her loathsome Department.

One last important point, though: in the end, it isn’t the person in the office that’s the real problem here; t’is hers, t’was his, t’will soon be some other trash’s, to misquote the Bard. No, the real problem is the office itself, that it even exists in the first goddamned place. As long as it does, there will always be some vicious, heartless bureau-creep waiting with bated breath to fill the seat of Too Much Power and get busy making decent peoples’ lives miserable to the greatest extent they can contrive.

Update! Amy Curtis unloads in an extensive Twitter/X thread, and it’s a joy and a wonder to behold.

Here’s why Peanut and Fred have become such a rallying point for people:

We aren’t suddenly in love with a squirrel and a raccoon.

They represent the problems of a very broken, petty government.

That’s just for openers; this is another one of which you very much need to read the all. Curtis really says it all here, and says it extremely well, too. Elsewhere, Francis also nails it clean and tight.

Why did those arrogant bastards of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation seize and execute Peanut and his confrere, Fred the Raccoon? The rationalizations are plain: Mark Longo didn’t have a permit for them; there were allegations that Peanut and Fred were “unsafe;” there were anonymous complaints about “wildlife gone wild;” the state is responsible for “rabies control.” None of them hold water for five seconds. Here is the real reason:

BECAUSE THEY COULD.

They could do so without fear for their lives, their fortunes, their careers, or their ability to sleep at night. Doing anything justifiable — e.g., tracking down some actual abusers of animals and hauling them before a court – would have involved a lot more work, and possibly some personal danger. Hey, officer safety! That’s the mantra, don’t y’know. It’s not just cops who chant it to themselves and one another.

Mark Longo and Peanut were safe and easy targets. For one thing, Peanut had a social media presence. They knew where he lived. For another, Longo, a well-known animal-rescue activist, was highly unlikely to resist them with force. So they chose to go after the felonious squirrel rather than some more problematic target. Got to do something to justify their salaries and benefits, right?

They could. So they did.

It is to our everlasting shame and disgrace that this should be so, but yeppers, that’s about the size of it.

Updated update! Another longish Tweet, from which I’ll just go ahead and C&P the text entire and not bother embedding.

Let me tell you a short story. My wife had an uncle. “Had”, because he lived in a tony upscale suburban enclave, and he rescued wildlife. He didn’t have a sanctuary, or a farm. He just helped local animals in need as he came across them.

One of his neighbors complained repeatedly. So much so that they eventually said the right combination of words, and a SWAT team was dispatched to her uncle’s house in the wee hours.

They breached his house. They deployed tear gas.

Her uncle, completely confused and taken by surprise, grabbed his pistol, hid in his bedroom, and called 911.

My wife discovered the death of her uncle by coming across the story in the media, including the full 911 recording that contained the audio of the execution of her uncle by one of the SWAT members, while he cowered behind his bed, in his own bedroom, begging to anyone who would listen — on the phone or in the room — to be told what was going on.

All because he cared for injured animals, and because his leftist neighbors were…well, leftist neighbors.

So, you tell me.

The P’Nut saga is by no means a new one, alas for us all.

Update to the updated update! Having seen some moaning and groaning here and there about the folly of everyone getting all het up over a friggin’ tree rat, of all things, when there are so many way more important issues confronting us, I can only say that if you can’t see that the P’nut story is in fact EVERYTHING—the whole fucking magilla, the underlying cause of ALL our woes wrapped up in one ugly, too-representative package with a big ol’ bow on top—there’s probably no hope for you, I’m afraid.

As Fran suggests in the post excerpted above, one never knows which falling rock will be the one that kicks off the avalanche. If, against all odds, mass outrage over the undeserved fate of poor P’nut the squirrel turns out to be the impetus for a much-needed and long-overdue settling of accounts with the dimestore dictators who would be the lords and masters of us lesser mortals…well hey, fine by me, I’m good with it.

Throughout the ages Final Straws have come in assorted shapes and sizes; the trick has always been in knowing ‘em when ya sees ‘em, then disporting your Serf Class selves accordingly. To date, the historical record tells us that your average Mark 1-Mod-0 tinpot tyrant will either wittingly decide to ignore them or just miss them altogether each and every time, to his tremendous cost.

Updates, forsooth! The very latest, via WRSA.

Updated info on the wrongfully euthanized squirrel Peanut, & raccoon Fred…

Some ridiculous judge DID sign a warrant. For a squirrel? On a called -in “complaint” by this photog Monica Keasler to the DEC, for unknown reasons. The woman proceeded to brag on her now deleted FB account – she’s also ditched IG & Linked In because people found out who she is. 

Reviewing facts, it’s a pathetic case of government waste, overreach, & misuse of resources.

These people rescued & raised Peanut as an orphaned kit. They had him for 7 years. The man created an animal rescue sanctuary as a result, and had allll the app. process done, & it was SIGNED. The only thing waiting on approval was an enclosure. This animal was not capable of wild survival. They tried that initially, but Peanut came back with injuries. Some rescued wildlife is not releasable – this is exactly why rehab sanctuaries will keep select animals after rehab capability is maxed. 

A few potential reasons: 

Missing limbs
Birds with lack of flight
Loss of vision or hearing
Predators unable to hunt sufficiently 
Prey unable to evade predators 
Failure to thrive due to health deficits
Captivity-raised lack of survival instincts
Conditions requiring ongoing medication

This RAID involved making the victims sit outside their home for 5 hours while these maniacs tore up everything. They were denied the right to call legal counsel. Feds went thru closets, leaving a complete mess. They broke soap bottles in the bathroom. They took apart the man’s TOILET upon escorting him before he could use it because apparently there could be some important squirrel propaganda hidden in there (I’m assuming in the tank). 😒 Please make it make sense.

Oh, THAT ain’t gonna happen, Miz Tala. Plenty more left at the link, so yet again: Read. It. ALL.