Why the Death of P’Nut the Squirrel Has Become a National Political Event | Vanity Fair

Just when you think there isn’t time for the 2024 election to get any weirder, a MAGA rallying cry over a recently deceased Instagram-famous squirrel and its OnlyFans-famous (human) owner coalesces at zero hour.

Here’s what you need to know about the squirrel that has Donald Trump, JD Vance, Elon Musk, and more “fired up” in the final hours before polls open.

Mark Longo is the human squirrel-daddy in this situation. He lives with his wife, Daniela Longo, in upstate New York. Longo is the mastermind behind two multifaceted social media presences. First, there’s Instagram handle @squirrel_dad_12, which points to the protected X account with the handle @squirrel_dad12, which seems to exist mostly to facilitate finding the main event, his OnlyFans account, username @squirrel_daddy. His bio on the site, featuring a photo of Longo in tight red boxer briefs with his hand hovering close to his own clutch of nuts, bills him as “Peanut’s dad, VERY kinky player.”

The other presence is similar in name, but very different in content: @peanut_the_squirrel12 on Instagram and TikTok are the accounts that Longo runs for Peanut, a squirrel Longo claimed to have rescued in New York City about seven years ago.

“His mom was hit by a car, and he was walking into a busy street in Downtown Manhattan,” Longo told the New York Times. “He ended up crawling up my leg.”

So Longo decided to bring P’Nut back to his home and bottle-feed him for eight months. That’s when he claims he released the squirrel into his Pine City, NY, backyard, only for the critter to return a few days later with half of his tail missing, apparently after an attack by another animal. From that day forward, P’Nut was an indoor squirrel, Longo telling the Times of the rodent, “he’s 24/7 cage-free his entire life.” The Instagram and TikTok accounts for the animal gained thousands of followers, and Longo and Daniela announced plans for a wildlife sanctuary, P’Nuts Freedom Farm (sometimes with an apostrophe, usually without).

Longo was happily chugging along, monetizing both P’Nut and deez nuts, often crossposting content on both accounts, like a video of Longo wearing extremely form-fitting grey sweatpants, cleaning torn-up paper and squirrel poop and fluff and the general rubbish that comes from sharing your human home with a squirrel.

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

Then, on October 30, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation came a-knocking with a warrant and seized both the celebrity squirrel and a civilian raccoon named Fred. According to Longo, government agents trashed the house.

“Following multiple reports from the public about the potentially unsafe housing of wildlife that could carry rabies and the illegal keeping of wildlife as pets, DEC conducted an investigation,” a statement provided to the Times read. The DEC requires permits to keep both squirrels and raccoons as pets.

Two days later, the bureau euthanized both animals, explaining that one had bitten an agent, and that they needed to be tested for rabies.

When Longo shared the news of P’Nut’s transfer to government custody, it sparked outrage. The news of his death made him a tiny martyr.

A Change.org petition urging reform of the DEC had nearly 60,000 signatures as of Monday.

“That squirrel has done more for the community then [sic] you ever will,” one signatory wrote in the comments. “Trash all of you are garbage.”

A GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign, too, was launched, and had gathered more than $177K on Monday. According to the page, donations will cover the Longos’ legal fees and support the farm.

Mark Longo speculated to the New York Post that a jealous tipster called in a complaint to the government agency.

“Maybe it’s someone who thinks I use this place to make a lot of money,” he said. “Did this do wonders to my OnlyFans? Absolutely. It’s making a lot of money from this.”

Some conservatives have found P’Nut to be symbolic, his plight representative to them of unjust government overreach. On Sunday, at a rally in Sanford, North Carolina, Vance said that Trump was “fired up” over the death of the animal.

“I know Don’s fired up about P’nut the Squirrel,” he said. “He was like, ‘You know, is it really the case that the Democrats murdered the Elon Musk of squirrels?’ Have you seen the videos of this squirrel? He’s, like, a genius. Or he was.”

Musk, too, has made several posts against P’Nut’s seizure and subsequent euthanization, including sharing a meme of a squirrel dressed as a Jedi that he dubbed “Obi PNut Kenobi.”

“The government should not be allowed to barge into your house and kill your pet! That’s messed up,” he wrote Saturday in one post on X (formerly Twitter), the social media site he owns. “Even if it is illegal to have a pet squirrel (which it shouldn’t be), why kill PNut instead of simply releasing him into the forest!?”

A Republican New York State assemblyman, Jake Blumencranz, even announced plans to introduce legislation in the animal’s name, dubbing it “Peanut’s Law: Humane Animal Protection Act.”

If this is indeed that “October surprise” we’ve been waiting for this election cycle, it couldn’t be much more surprising than this—not just for its a-few-days-late timing, but for being the first time in memory that a rodent (who sometimes wore a tiny cowboy hat) has been central to a political party’s closing arguments ahead of a presidential election.

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