Over a month after the deaths of Peanut the Squirrel and Fred the Raccoon, the backlash remains steady. New York Department of Environmental Conservation officials euthanized both, claiming that Peanut bit an official on the hand. The organization raided the house of owner Mark Longo over improper permits, taking both animals and euthanizing them.
The organization listed rabies concerns as why. However, infectious disease specialist Dr. Edward R. Rensimer told The New York Post that it didn't make sense. He said that officials should have known that the odds of either animal having rabies was near zero.
There have been no squirrel to human rabies transmission ever documented in this country," said Rensimer, a Texas infectious disease specialist, "I can't imagine, frankly, what their thinking was, if they knew anything about this area."
This is supported by New York State itself.
Peanut The Squirrel Dies
"Some animals almost never get rabies," the New York Department of Health states on its own rabies fact sheet. It lists squirrels as catching the virus in rare situations. Meanwhile, raccoons can carry rabies, but the actual number is extremely low. There's only been 35 lab-confirmed cases of rabies in raccoons in 17 years.
"The [Center for Disease Control] doesn't even consider squirrel bites reportable," Rensimer said. The specialist said it should have been obvious that neither Peanut nor Fred had rabies. Longo had cared for Fred for more than 10 days and Peanut for 7 years. The specialist questioned why officials just didn't quarantine both animals for 10 days to see if symptoms appeared. "If a raccoon came to them as a frail little animal months ago, the chances it would still be alive with rabies is pretty slim."
The specialist also pointed out that it takes 45 days for rabies to go to a person's brain.
"It's not like he gets bitten on a Friday and he's going to be dead on Sunday," Rensimer said. "They had time to think this over. They could say, 'You know what, there's no emergency here. Let's think this through.' A reasonable thing would have been to say to the guy, 'How would you like to get rabies immunizations?' Why would you kill the animal to study it to make sure it doesn't have rabies?The odds it has rabies is virtually zero."
The specialist questioned why the DEC agents weren't given a rabies immunization to neutralize the risk of any infection.
"It's insane. It's common sense. You don't need to be a rabies expert to know that," he said. "The whole thing smells badly. They had options, and they had time, and they didn't exercise either one of them."
