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PaperclipPerfector  25d ago (text post)   34281 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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How a terrorist is born ...

https://nypost.com/2024/11/01/us-news/peanut-the-squirrel-beloved-pet-and-internet-sensation-put-to-death-by-new-york-state/

Peanut the Squirrel, beloved pet and internet sensation, euthanized after being seized by NY state

Peanut the Squirrel, of internet fame, has been euthanized after the pet was seized by New York state earlier this week, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation.

The seven-year-old gray rescue squirrel, commonly referred to as “P’Nut” on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, was put to death, along with Fred the raccoon, so that the animals could be tested for the presence of rabies, according to a statement from the agency obtained by WETM.

The DEC claims that Peanut, who was notably docile and friendly over the course of his very public facing life, bit one of the investigators on the hand while being confiscated from his Elmira home on Wednesday.

“In addition, a person involved with the investigation was bitten by the squirrel. To test for rabies, both animals were euthanized. The animals are being tested for rabies and anyone who has been in contact with these animals is strongly encouraged to consult their physician,” the DEC statement read, according to WETM.

I don't know really where to start. They euthanized the animals to test for almost zero chance of rabies because they were incompetent when seizing them.| This story has a little of everything - lovable pets, government overreach, incompetence, heavy handedness, the type of people that love pedantry and HOAs and just bureaucrats being bureaucrats

Why does it need to be tested for rabies? Why not just assume it had it and act accordingly?

Disregard, I am retarded and mixed it up with treatment for a nasty livestock parasite.

I believe the rabies treatment is extremely unpleasant, but maybe I'm mixing it up with something else. It also had a poor success rate

Not particularly bad, and it is a vaccine not a treatment. It has a spectacular success rate as long as it is given before the disease takes hold. It has a zero rate after.

Looks like I was mixing it up with something else, thank you.

Wait, you can't test an animal for rabies without killing it? Wtf?

The earliest and most distinctive place where rabies expresses itself physically - and the reason that it's so lethal, and its symptoms so memorable - is the central nervous system. If you want to check whether something's brain is full of viral bodies, you pretty much have to get hold of a chunk of its brain.

Couldn't you test saliva? I assume that the virus is present in there if the bites are transmitting the disease? Or maybe cerebrospinal fluid, though that might be hard to sample from a very smol animal.

You could, but the test would be less consistent, and rabies is bad enough that nobody wants to fuck around. If you take the (very unpleasant) vaccine early enough, you can survive, but once symptoms have been expressed it's basically a death sentence, even with the full might of modern medicine. Currently the rate of survival without becoming a permanently bedridden vegetable stands at one. Not one percent, one person.

Why did law enforcement take an interest in some guy having a pet squirrel to begin with? Like I can grok the existence of a policy of 'any animal which bites an officer must be euthanized and tested for rabies, no exceptions ever'. I'm guessing that's the story here. But why was a pet squirrel a matter for the police?

NY presumably has some law on the books like the Migratory Bird Treaty (which bans keeping owls hawks geese etc as pets in addition to hunting them) but for other wild animals. I believe lots of states have laws like that even if they're rarely enforced. Somebody either had a Karen moment or otherwise was trying to troll him and reported him, and whatever office is in charge of enforcing that law said "finally we have an excuse to exercise our authority!"

Article says the guy was keeping a raccoon as a pet too, and neighbors had been complaining to the authorities about the raccoon. And since raccoons are one of the major rabies vector species, I guess the authorities felt the need to come remove it, and the squirrel was declared guilty by association.

This is deer season; I flat out don't believe that NYDEC(which seems to be their equivalent of fish and game/parks and wildlife) was bored or lacked an excuse to exercise their authority.

I think we can guess what happened here. ;-)

A long time ago I was a congressional intern. The issue that generated the most mail was animal rights. Don't be surprised if this killing has political impact.

If you're interested in telling, I would definitely enjoy Recursive Congressional Storytime (with names and details obfuscated to protect the guilty of course)

The only interesting thing is that the Congressman treated his professional staff like dirt, and they hated him for it, but they respected his intelligence and work ethic.

I am surprised that opposing the euthenasia of animals for questionable human health reasons is obviously read as having a right-wing valence. It was easy to see the angle for the ducks and cats thing in Ohio because it was immigrants (allegedly) doing it, but what the hell does Trump or Kamala have to do with squirrels?

It feeds into the culture war. This was a multi agency raid with judicial warrants to kill a squirrel and racoon.

Blue tribe members love to talk about how much government money is spent on rural people. But then things like this are counted as spending money on rural people.

It touches on other aspects. The agents used the search warrant as an opportunity to grill the woman of the house on her immigration status, which is something they never would have done to someone in NYC.

It's common to hear online that people can't understand why other parts of the state would want to separate from NYC when it brings in so much tax revenue.

But a rural view of the situation is sort of like this: A man from the government walks up and demands $5. He then pays his friend $10 to slap you as hard as he can. Then the man goes on a long rant about how much he spends to govern these fucking takers.

Sure, the government man is net spending money. But the rural guy isn't exactly happy about the transaction.

I think it’s more the government intrusion angle than animal rights.

It has a "right wing wing valence" because the Democrats are openly the party of faceless bueurocrats drastically interviening in peoples lives for dubious health reasons and/or to save the planet.

By extension anyone who has a problem with a faceless buerocrats "euthanizing" house pets for dubious health reasons is assumed to be a closet Republican.

Shows the harm of government regulation.

Asking my neighbors if I can have all their old BLM signs they had to keep in the garage because they're scared to be seen throwing them away.

If I can turn an F into an A+ I can turn a B into an S

their old BLM signs they had to keep in the garage because they're scared to be seen throwing them away.

You should definitely start mailing them some Qurans.

They should have waited until after the election to seize Peanut the Squirrel. Why don't government agencies have informal rules in place to prevent themselves from making controversial decisions during presidential elections?

I don’t get the excuse of biopsying the squirrels brain to check for rabies. If there is a concern just give the guy the anti rabies meds anyway.

squirrels almost never have rabies and literally have never transferred it to humans

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5763497/

Exposure to rodents and lagomorphs has never been implicated as the cause of infection for a case of rabies in humans in the United States, nor are these animals considered natural reservoirs of the disease.

Consider the possibility that a squirrel living indoors in close proximity to a raccoon would be more likely than wild squirrels to be infected.

It seems far less likely to me for an animal in captivity to be infected with rabies, whether squirrel or raccoon, than one living in the wild.

I'm convinced. They definitely needed to kill the squirrel.

Given the amount of effort I have to put in to secure my wife's herb and vegetable garden from squirrels, anyone running on a squirrel extermination or at the very least squirrel concentration camp platform, would carry my vote. They're a menace to good American produce.

By "almost zero", there has literally never been confirmed case of squirrel-to-human rabies transmission. It's not the same level of literally impossible as doing the same to a possum, who just can't get the disease, but it's extremely hard to read as anything but a pretext such that any challenge to the 'investigation' would be moot.

As... evidenced by the bit where they euthanized the raccoon, too. Though from what I can find, it looks like that the DEC started with the raccoon and the squirrel was a side benefit.

The whole thing is fractally stupid. There's a layer on top of things where I'd love to debate the merits of laws against keeping wildlife as pets -- tbf, they don't make good pets! But given that the laws are near-always originally meant for more like Florida Man Tiger King bullshittery and inevitably turn into a vehicle for various 'born free' morons to euthanize squirrels and ferrets on their way to eliminating cats. But New York, at least on the books, doesn't ban this: there's a mess of licensing for 'exhibition' of 'dangerous animals' like the raccoon. The potential for handling these matters exists, the government just didn't want to handle it like mature adults.

I expect some of that's the squirrel's owner being a bit of a putz, but 'we just abuse power when the target is kinda annoying'.

But like the recent revelations in the Penny case, that's kinda the point. There's no putting the toothpaste back into the tube, here; there is no meaningful way to challenge it.

But given that the laws are near-always originally meant for more like Florida Man Tiger King bullshittery

Of course, Joe Exotic’s menagerie was entirely legal. He’s in prison for putting a hit on Carol Baskin.

As it turns out, the law is no deterrent to sufficiently motivated crazy people- they’re more willing to jump through hoops to do the supremely retarded things they can’t get away with just ignoring the law on.

for various 'born free' morons to euthanize squirrels and ferrets on their way to eliminating cats.

I couldn't find a justification for the "eliminating cats" claim on that thread.(Some) Bird people certainly want to make outdoor cats illegal, but I haven't seen anyone want to actually eliminate all cats.

Off topic, but unfortunately TNR somehow fails to reduce feral cat populations (I don't have a cite for this off the top of my head, but I read it in Cat Sense). I don't have a problem with people letting their cats out, at least in the US (although we should recognize that the density of cats in residential neighborhoods is much greater than the density of the wild felids that lived there before, so the bobcat comparison is unconvincing).

I have nothing to say except it would be hilarious and very fitting if this election was swung by the killing of a squirrel

Who Trump said should have claimed to be Mexican so he would have gotten a free shopping spree instead of euthanasia.

That was fake (I had to check, it's certainly Trumpy enough), but he should have put out a press release decrying it and noting the state of NY was known for its political prosecutions.

I am disappointed.

I mean in Ohio they at least have the decency to eat the cats and the dogs.

Maybe someone did eat the squirrel? Or did they give him a proper burial?

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