The death of a squirrel has somehow intruded on the news cycle in the relentless last days of a presidential election.
Last week, the New York state government seized PâNut the pet squirrel and a pet raccoon named Fred from owners Mark and Daniela Longo in Pine City, New York, in what was reportedly a five-hour raid.
Shortly afterward, the two animals were euthanized.
PâNut apparently had been an internet sensation. The squirrel had been rescued seven years earlier after its mother was killed by a car and was quite tame.
PâNutâs owners put videos of him performing tricks online, and he appeared to be quite far from being a public menace.
Frankly, I walk past more public health and safety menaces (that the government does nothing about) every time I walk outside my home in New York City.
So why did the state government have to use valuable resources on this case?
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Chemung County Department of Health released a joint statement on the PâNut incident, which they said took place only after reports of wildlife being held at a residence:
The Chemung County Department of Health and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) are coordinating to ensure the protection of public health related to the illegal possession of wild animals that have the potential to carry the rabies virus.
On Oct. 30, DEC seized a raccoon and squirrel sharing a residence with humans, creating the potential for human exposure to rabies. In addition, a person involved with the investigation was bitten by the squirrel. To test for rabies, both animals were euthanized.
So, the reason these animals had to be euthanized was that, during the raid, one of these Keystone Cops got bitten by the likely terrified squirrel?
I canât imagine how outraged Iâd be. Letâs say the Longos really were doing something dangerous and illegal. Do they deserve to be treated this way by their government?
âThey made me sit outside for five hours,â Mark Longo said, according to The New York Times. âThey wouldnât even let me feed my horses.â
Needless to say, the incident created a huge amount of public backlash.
Hereâs entrepreneur Elon Musk on X, which he owns:
Even Donald Trumpâs running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, opined on the incident at a campaign stop. Vance said the former president is outraged.
â[Trump] was like, âYou know, is it really the case that the Democrats murdered the Elon Musk of squirrels?’ Have you seen the videos of this squirrel? Heâs, like, a genius. Or he was,â Vance said, according to the New York Post.Â
âThe same government that doesnât care about hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant criminals coming into our country, doesnât want us to have pets,â Vance said. âItâs the craziest thing.â
This line from a Wall Street Journal editorial was spot-on about not only an apparently abusive action by the government but the typical pettiness of our out-of-control bureaucracies.
âThe PâNut incident has exploded on social media as an example of abusive government, and itâs hard to conclude otherwise if Mr. Longoâs account is accurate,â The Wall Street Journalâs editorial board wrote. âThe 34-year-old had better watch out now that heâs gone public, because thereâs nobody more vengeful than a bureaucracy thatâs been embarrassed when its bullying zealotry is exposed.â
What kind of system do we have where the people have to be fearful of their government?
At this point, I think most Americans have an experience or two where some government agency or another swooped into their lives like a great lummox and made a mess of things before ejecting from the situation without so much as an apology.
Even the kids got a national lesson in how this works during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Government agencies from the federal government on down stepped intrusively into and convulsed our entire way of lifeâcreating an economic crisis and generational learning lossâall in the name of public health.
It turns out that an enormous number of the highly intrusive COVID-19 mandates werenât based on science at all. They were based on the arbitrary whims of bureaucrats, to make people feel like the government was doing something.
And after all that, the bureaucrats were allowed to move on with little accountability and certainly no apology to the American people.
Thatâs why this PâNut story resonated so much on social media.
Our elected officials defer to so-called bureaucratic âexpertsâ who often run roughshod over liberty and make what often are egregiously wrong decisions against our interests. At times there are deadly consequences.
This was the heart and soul of Fauci-ism. But it isnât just a few big public health agencies that have this mindset.
No, it infects the culture and mentality of government agencies from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to the FBI.
In the case of the Longos, the consequences may have been âlow,â although the lives of their two beloved pets were mercilessly extinguished. But what about when itâs parents who wonât affirm their childâs gender transition and blue states such as New York and California sic their agencies on them?
When Vice President Kamala Harris says on the presidential campaign trail that she would trust the so-called experts to make decisions, this is what I and many Americans think of.
Our apparent new-age philosopher kings often have expertise in little more than navigating the byzantine bureaucracies that they perpetually swim in. And they now clearly are willing to use their power on behalf of increasingly radical ideology.
They arenât reasonable, they arenât rational, and most importantly they arenât accountable for their actions.
In the end, this story isnât really about a pet squirrel and a pet raccoon. Itâs about how American citizens increasingly are being treated by authorities that hardly resemble the limited government of, by, and for the people, as laid down by our forefathers.
