P’Nut can’t relaxation in peace.
The headless physique of the world’s most well-known squirrel is at the moment being held in a refrigerated room someplace in upstate New York, The Submit has realized.
The state Division of Environmental Conservation is preserving it as “proof” from its brokers’ harried November raid on a house in Chemung County, the place they seized P’Nut the Squirrel and his raccoon pal, Fred, after which euthanized the beloved pets, in keeping with an company spokesperson.
Their heads had been reduce off for rabies testing, which proved neither animal was contaminated with the lethal illness.
The whereabouts and standing of the animals’ precise noggins, in the meantime, are fully unknown.
A state Division of Well being spokesperson refused to verify the situation of their stays or whether or not the critters had been shipped off to the company’s Wadsworth Heart rabies lab in Slingerlands, citing pending litigation by the animals’ grieving proprietor, Mark Longo.
Longo had hoped get his pets’ our bodies again for a proper burial and funeral.
He mentioned he instantly put in a request for the stays however acquired solely radio silence.
“We filed paperwork for it, and that’s what sort of harm essentially the most — they didn’t reply to it,” he mentioned.
Longo’s lawyer, Nora Constance Marino, mentioned she fired off notices of preservation of proof to the DEC and Chemung County sheriff’s workplace on Nov. 4, together with Elmira Animal Management and the Chemung County Well being Division on Nov. 14.
“I would like and count on the our bodies of Peanut and Fred, of their entirety, to be returned to my purchasers, even when they’re in items,” she mentioned.
She mentioned there are “evidentiary causes” to protect P’Nut and Fred’s corpses, however that Longo and his spouse additionally “ought to have the ability to have the our bodies of their beloved animals … for no matter sentimental sendoff they deem applicable.”
DEC brokers stormed Longo’s 350-acre property, the place he and his spouse run an animal sanctuary, on Oct. 30.
Officers seized P’Nut, who the couple had taken in as a family pet seven years in the past after his mom was killed by a automotive, and up to date rescue Fred.
Officers claimed P’Nut and Fred needed to be euthanized for rabies exams as a result of the squirrel bit an agent in the course of the raid.
However, as The Submit beforehand reported, paperwork present the animals had been slated for demise and decapitation not less than seven days earlier than the slipshod operation, which has been broadly criticized as a tragic instance of presidency overreach.
Infectious illness specialist Dr. Edward R. Rensimer beforehand informed The Submit there was “just about zero” likelihood P’Nut had rabies, and mentioned officers might have discovered whether or not the squirrel or raccoon had the lethal illness with out killing the animals.
