It’s the Monday right before the 2024 presidential election and Republicans cannot stop talking about the state-sanctioned euthanizing of a squirrel named Peanut.

Known colloquially to his 720,000-plus Instagram followers as P’Nut, the tiny, charismatic rodent has become a right-wing martyr — as has his surviving, very muscular, frequently shirtless owner, Mark Longo, who also happens to be an OnlyFans model with a significant gay following.

Despite the many freedoms New Yorkers are afforded, it turns out that having a squirrel as a pet isn’t legal in New York. In a New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) raid on Longo’s property in Pine City, New York, Peanut reportedly bit an officer involved in the investigation. The squirrel and at least one other animal (a raccoon named Fred) were taken from the property and euthanized. What ensued was a social media frenzy that gained particular purchase in right-wing spaces, with conservatives going to bat for the OnlyFans model and his late pet.

How can a woodland rodent become Republican? Did Peanut have to die? Why are Elon Musk and JD Vance talking about this dead animal? Are squirrels good pets? Why does this often-naked man love this squirrel so much?

The more one discovers about Peanut, the more questions arise. That said, here’s one attempt to parse the story of how a charming rodent somehow became the only thing Republicans were interested in less than 24 hours before Election Day.

Who was Peanut the Squirrel, and why was he killed?

For some time now, social media has paid special attention to conventionally attractive men with their pets. It’s not unrelated to the whole phenomenon of men on dating apps posing with their dogs and cats. It wasn’t complicated: extremely fit man + adorable pet = many, many internet followers.

In a simpler era, before Peanut and his owner Mark Longo were conservative celebrities, one of my friends sent me a post from Longo’s social media. It was a video of Longo, shirtless, hanging out with Peanut. The message, though unspoken, was clear: Look at this man with his big muscles and his little squirrel (not a euphemism).

Longo’s other videos — wearing tight pants with squirrel, wearing tiny shorts with squirrel, sporting a bulge with squirrel — made it very clear that although the TikTok account was named “Peanut the Squirrel,” his co-star was the real draw. Longo’s OnlyFans account, “Squirrel Daddy,” seemed to confirm that the creator was parlaying his and Peanut’s social media fame into lucrative filmed sex work — work that, to be extremely clear, did not feature Peanut.

While Longo and Peanut’s fame was ascending, no one was asking about the legality of Longo’s ownership of Peanut. According to Longo in interviews with the New York Post, he found Peanut seven years earlier as an orphaned kit (the term for baby squirrels) and raised the small, charming rodent himself.

Unfortunately for Longo, the animal laws of New York State, where he and Peanut lived together, do not allow humans to have squirrels as pets, orphaned or not. Longo and his partner also owned Fred the raccoon — another animal that isn’t allowed to be kept as a pet. In addition to Peanut and Fred, Longo and his partner opened P’Nuts Freedom Farm, an animal sanctuary in Pine City, in April 2023.

After fielding numerous anonymous complaints about Longo’s animals (Longo has stated he believes the complaints were from internet activists), New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation said it raided Longo’s residence last week. According to official reports, during the inspection Peanut bit one of the investigating officers; the DEC, following protocol, put Peanut and Fred (the raccoon) down and tested both animals for rabies.

The New York DEC said in a statement:

On Oct. 30, DEC seized a raccoon and squirrel sharing a residence with humans, creating the potential for human exposure to rabies. In addition, a person involved with the investigation was bitten by the squirrel. To test for rabies, both animals were euthanized.

My colleague Keren Landman, an MD who has trained as a physician and epidemiologist, pointed out that the measures might have been over-aggressive. Longo had been raising Peanut in his home for over seven years. If the squirrel were actually rabid, he would have had a short life span. The animal was also captive, she pointed out, and could have had his blood tested without being killed.

In the wake of Peanut and Fred’s euthanasia, Longo has been speaking at length with the New York Post in exclusive interviews.

“They treated me like I was a terrorist. They treated this raid as if I was a drug dealer,” Long told the Post, explaining that the raid was some five hours long.

Longo also addressed the people who filed complaints against him, Peanut, Fred, and his animal sanctuary. “To the group of people who called DEC, there’s a special place in hell for you,” Longo added.

How did Peanut become a right-wing martyr?

Based on Peanut’s social media presence (created by Longo), there was no obvious partisan messaging on Peanut’s accounts. The closest Peanut got to politics was celebrating the holidays with no specific mention of Christmas. The same goes for Longo’s social media presence, where his adult content is described as “kinky” and has a gay following.

Yet, because of Longo’s interviews with the Post, which leans conservative, right-wing personalities have picked up his and Peanut’s story. Many frame Longo and Peanut as an example of government overreach. With the aid of AI, some conservatives like Elon Musk turned Peanut into a right-wing meme, creating images like a phalanx of Peanuts ready for war, or Peanut as a Jedi chipmunk (even though Peanut was a squirrel).

Peanut’s tale of potentially wrongful euthanasia has gotten so popular with the Republicans that vice presidential nominee JD Vance cited the tiny mammal in a couple of his campaign speeches.

“Have you seen the videos of this squirrel? He’s, like, a genius. Or he was,” Vance told a crowd in North Carolina, assuring them that his running mate was as heated about the squirrel death as he was.

“Is it really the case that the Democrats murdered the Elon Musk of squirrels?” Vance said, recalling a conversation he had with Trump.

The claim being made here is that the local New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which was responsible for Peanut’s death, is synonymous with the Democratic Party. How, precisely, is unclear. It is also unclear what the “Elon Musk of squirrels” even means. As Vance’s critics point out, he and his cohort have shown more empathy toward a tiny rodent deemed a potential rabies risk than immigrant families or human victims of police brutality.

At this juncture, Peanut has been transformed by the very-online right into a mascot to rile up engagement. Musk and right-wing influencer Ian Miles Cheong have both — perhaps facetiously — connected Peanut’s death to an eventual Republican victory, although the math on that remains fairly “??? Profit.” New York, where Peanut resided illegally, is a solidly blue state. It is true, however, that putting down an animal is an emotional topic for many across party lines, a subject that Musk likely remembers from the Harambe discourse of 2016. (At the time, Trump said the zoo officials who shot the gorilla “didn’t have a choice.”)

Longo, for his part, has raised over $180,000 in the wake of Peanut’s death, funds that he says will go toward his animal sanctuary’s “mission.” Many of those donations cite the politics that Peanut has become connected to. It just goes to show that being at the center of a culture war — even one that is, for the big-name players, perhaps a little hollow — pays.