Peanut and Fred: Cash cows for grifters

The story of the squirrel and the raccoon is more complicated than it seems at first glance. Both animals were used to generate money for their keepers.

The story of Peanut and Fred, the squirrel and the raccoon, who were killed by New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, has set the Internet on fire. Many writers here on Substack have railed against the overreach and tyranny of the New York state government, and there has been vast outrage on X, Notes, and other social media platforms.

But things are often not quite what they seem. The initial story was that the keepers of Fred and Peanut were running an animal shelter, but there is more to it, according to a story in the NY Post this morning. You see, my friends, Peanut and Fred were cash cows for their keepers:

P’nut the Squirrel was ratted out by someone — and his upstate owners think it was over jealousy.

Mark and Daniela Longo told The Post on Sunday that they had been cashing in on their furry internet sensation — who helped steer followers to their raunchy OnlyFans page — before he was seized from their animal sanctuary and euthanized by state environmental officials over rabies fears last week.

The couple’s financial success, fueled at least partly by P’nut, may have been enough to drive someone to drop a dime on them — and their fluffy-tailed cash cow, they said.

“Maybe it’s someone who thinks I use this place to make a lot of money,” Mark said of his rescue farm.

“Did this do wonders to my OnlyFans?” Mark said of the site, where P’nut frolicked along with other animals. “Absolutely. It’s making a lot of money from this.”

The Longos said they bought their 350-acre spread near Elmira with the $800,000 that they made in one month posting their porn online — and P’nut then began pulling his own weight with his separate family-friendly fan base.

“I had my own kind of squirrel dad account, my own Instagram,” Mark Longo said. “And it’s me doing my workouts and a lot of the times, you know, I don’t have time to make [dual] content like I used to.

“I just tag my squirrel dad account from the P’nut video I posted, so it gets double the clip views,” he said. “Every once in a while, a shirtless photo [on P’nut’s page, too], but I completely separated myself from this entire thing. Obviously, people were going to find both and try to associate them.”

I had planned to write an article today warning about the dangers of going public with information about yourself, your family, your pets, etc. Until I read the NY Post story, I was unaware of the money involved, OnlyFans, etc. Now that I know about it, I have a much clearer view of what went on here.

The keepers of Fred and Peanut exploited them for money.

Does that sound harsh to you? It shouldn’t because that was what was going on with these two people. They used the animals to get money from their followers, and got some of the supporters of the animals to go over to their lucrative porn site on OnlyFans.

So the keepers of Fred and Peanut deliberately put them in the public eye to get money and views. I harp on this point because putting the animals in the public eye is what resulted in their deaths. If the well-being of the two animals were the main concern of their keepers, they would have kept both of them secret until they had completed the paperwork necessary to protect them.

But that is not what happened, because there was a profit motive that resulted in the animals being relentlessly promoted on social media. Someone took exception to this and reported them to the authorities in NY, resulting in the raid that ended with the deaths of the two animals.

Many people who wrote about Peanut and Fred were no doubt completely unaware of the real story here. I do not blame them for leaping to the defense of the animals, because I felt a similar outrage. However, given the new information, I have no sympathy for the keepers of Fred and Peanut. They knew exactly what they were doing when they began exploiting the two animals to make money.

And now I will share my warning with all of you: The Eye of the Public can be as dangerous as the Eye of Sauron. NEVER draw the Eye of the Public’s attention to yourself, your family, your pets or anything else you value until you have strengthened your defenses and are sure you can withstand all the potential consequences of the scrutiny of that eye.

I had initially thought that the keepers of Fred and Peanut were simply naive and did not understand this. But now I know they simply did not care about the potential consequences because they were exploiting both animals for money. They put Fred and Peanut squarely in the public eye, and somebody who did not like the Longos took advantage of this to weaponize NY’s Department of Environmental Conservation against Fred and Peanut. Both animals died as a result of this conflict between human beings.

Some of you might not like what I have written here, but it is the truth, and it is the true picture of what happened. Fred and Peanut would still be alive and well if their keepers had truly cared about their safety and well-being, and kept them out of the public eye until all the necessary paperwork had been done to legalize them and protect them from seizure by NY’s evil and cruel Department of Environmental Conservation.

For those of you who have not read it, Jeffrey posted the NY statute on Notes:

So if I had to point the finger of blame at anyone, here is the order in which I would do it:

1. The Longos for drawing the Eye of the Public’s attention to Peanut and Fred before they were legalized, and for exploiting both animals for money.

2. The dirty rat who used the Department of Environmental Conservation as a weapon against the Longos and ended up getting Peanut and Fred killed. 

3. The Department of Environmental Conservation, which stupidly, viciously, and ruthlessly killed Peanut and Fred for no valid reason.

RIP Peanut and Fred, you both deserved better. 🪦

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