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PaperclipPerfector  25d ago (text post)   34282 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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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. ;-)

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