How a celebrity squirrel became a harbinger of Trump’s return

At Anne’s Pancakes, a local breakfast spot in neighboring Elmira, residents were emphatically behind the squirrel – and the election results. “P’Nut is a hero, a symbol of the resistance. You don’t just take someone’s rescue pet and kill them,” said Peter Fleming.

“What kind of satanic s— is that?” Standing with him, Jay Lee Williams said he doubted they were wild animals as the government claimed. “They sounded familiar to me. Why do they have the authority to do that?”

A few hours earlier, before the election results came in, at a bar in Elmira, Macie Drake said she also doubted an indoor squirrel had rabies. And there were bigger questions. “Why are they sending agents to a home when they could be dealing with bigger issues like immigration and homelessness?” she asked.

‘I’m just being friendly with a squirrel’

Jeremy Christian, 44, a union electrician, questioned why the state had the authority to raid the Longos’ home. “If I want a squirrel as a pet, shut up.” Democrats, he said, were “a bunch of pedophiles” in Washington DC.

“You do whatever you do and I’m just being friendly with a squirrel, raising it like my child, and you want to run in my house for it? What are you going to do? Raid my goldfish snacks? No. Stop it .I’m done with it.

“We call it abuse of power. We don’t want the government in our business. They’re just trying to control people.”

One woman, who described herself as a school teacher, said: “People have lost their minds. Wild animals deserve to be wild. It’s much ado about nothing.”

Arlo Baker, a receptionist at the Chemung Department of Health, said she had received dozens of threatening calls about P’Nut despite the department not having anything to do with animal control.

At Freedom Farm, Mark Longo reflected on the events of October 30 and remembered P’Nut as loving, curious and sometimes grumpy.

“Why did we need 10 officers to carry out a five-hour raid? My wife told them where the raccoon was immediately. They knew Fred was in the closet. If he was such a danger, why didn’t they take him just out? Why did you search my cupboards and not the cupboards in the rest of the house? Because I have a side that is not their cup of tea?

“There is a big picture here, and it is not about two small animals. It is about individual freedoms. I didn’t get a fair trial and my constitutional rights were violated for a raccoon and a squirrel.”