Peanut, who has amassed more than half a million Instagram followers, was euthanized by officials to be tested for rabies.
Peanut, the Instagram-famous squirrel that was seized from its owner’s home Wednesday, has been euthanized by New York state officials.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation took Peanut, as well as a raccoon named Fred, on Wednesday after the agency learned the animals were “sharing a residence with humans, creating the potential for human exposure to rabies," it said in a joint statement with the Chemung County Department of Health.
Both Peanut and Fred were euthanized to test for rabies, the statement said. It was unclear when the animals were euthanized.
There were no other options, imo. The inspector who was bitten likely did get a vaccine immediately, but vaccines are not guaranteed to work. There is no reliable way to test an animal for rabies without killing it.
These rules exist to help people and animals, and law enforcement followed them all to the letter.
The vaccines are not guaranteed to work, so we must sacrifice the animal in a prayer to ensure they do
Treatment for the initial exposure should at least delay spreading infection until the results of the test at specialized facilities comes back between 24 and 72 hours after euthanization, but a positive test means repeated treatments on a strict schedule will be necessary. You cannot just continuously treat everyone for rabies all the time but you also cannot just wait 10 days of quarantine to see if the animal shows symptoms, and especially with rodents because they might never show symptoms at all.
This is how the world works. Rabies sucks, but this is how we deal with it.
