It Takes a Village to Kill Your Pets

I find squirrels annoying. I live in a place with an abnormal concentration of oaks, and it’s not unusual for me to look outside and see 6 squirrels running around. Old people come here to retire, and they congregate in large numbers. Squirrels are concentrated in much the same way.

I shoot squirrels. I used to eat them, but then I started shooting them and leaving them for the birds, just to get rid of them. They damage things.

They ate the fuel gauge on my yard tractor. They chewed on my extremely expensive electric gate. They chewed on planters. One got into my chimney, and I had to shoot it in the fireplace. I have a productive peach tree, and squirrels cut the peaches off and leave them on the ground, sometimes without even taking a bite.

I quit shooting squirrels for a long time. I quit after an encounter with a mother squirrel. I was welding something up in the shop, and the shop door was open. She kept walking by, carrying things in her mouth. Ordinarily, squirrels won’t come near people, but this one trusted me. She kept carrying twigs into a nearby crape myrtle. She was building a nest.

This was a problem, obviously. She was going to produce new squirrels right next to my house. But I felt bad about shooting her, so I let it go.

I just paid $6000 to have mechanics undo the damage her offspring and their pals did to my truck. They ate the wiring harness, for one thing. You would not believe what a wiring harness for an old Dodge costs. They don’t make them. They ate the box containing the most expensive electronics. Dodge doesn’t make those, either.

I’m going back to killing squirrels. Nothing else I can do.

I tell the story to show I’m not a weepy squirrel-lover. But I was still incensed to read that government employees had held a man at gunpoint, confiscated a squirrel he rescued as a baby, and killed it. Of course, I’m talking about Pnut the Instagram squirrel.

The headlines say “euthanized.” That’s very pretty, but here’s what really happened: they held this terrified, squirming squirrel down–an animal that had grown to love and trust a human being–and they shoved a needle into him while he tried to get loose. Then they held him in place while he died.

The excuse? Rabies. When they abducted this pet, he bit one of the kidnappers. Understandably. So rather than have the assailant take a series of harmless rabies shots, to protect himself from an animal that had been living symptom-free for 7 years in close contact with two human beings who handled him daily, they killed a beloved pet who was also an Instagram star, loved by millions of people.

In America, animals are property. You can’t use deadly force to prevent someone from killing an animal. It may be your autistic daughter’s service dog. It may be a pet that has shared your bed for 12 years. Doesn’t matter. If a methhead decides to strangle your pet in front of you, and you’re not strong enough to save him, you can’t use a deadly weapon to save him.

Having read the Pnut story, I am inclined to think the law is wrong. I now think you should be allowed to shoot anyone who tries to kill a pet. You can shoot people to prevent rape and kidnapping. In terms of the suffering caused, harming pets is right up there with these crimes. It’s not right to expect people to stand by and witness the killing of a pet when they have the means to stop it.

Unfortunately, a change in the law would not have helped Pnut’s owner, because Pnut was killed by government employees doing their jobs.

Is it acceptable for a Christian to say it’s okay to take a human life to save the life of a pet? Yes.

David was a murderer. He had sex with a loyal subject’s wife, while the subject, Uriah, was fighting in a war to benefit David. The wife, Bathsheba, became pregnant, and in order to hide his sin, David had Uriah killed.

Nathan went to David and told him a story. He said there was a poor man who had a sheep he had raised. It was his only sheep, and he had made it a pet. It shared his bed. He loved it. A rich neighbor who had many sheep took it and butchered it to feed a guest. David was enraged. He said the rich man had to die, and he fully meant it. He had the power to execute. When he said the man had to die, he was pronouncing a sentence with the full authority of the state.

Nathan, a prophet who spoke for God, did not disagree with him.

The story about the sheep, which appears to have been untrue, was intended to show David the evil of his own conduct.

The older I get, the more I think we have gone backward by repealing the death penalty for offenses other than homicide. Under the old English common law, nearly all felonies were capital offenses.

Under Ron DeSantis, raping children is now a capital offense in Florida. The Supreme Court may disagree if a case is appealed, but I agree with the law. There are many types of harm that are more damaging than death.

I wish the people who took Pnut and killed him could be banned from employment and public assistance. They should have to beg in front of malls.

They also killed Fred, a raccoon who lived in the house. I understand why Fred had to be taken away, and an argument can be made for killing him. Animals have to be killed in order to be checked for rabies. Raccoons can have rabies without showing symptoms. Squirrels can, too, but there was no evidence Fred had bitten Pnut.

If they absolutely had to kill Fred, so be it, but it seems to me they could have tested him before killing Pnut. If Fred was clean, the odds of Pnut being infected were infinitesimal.

Personally, given the circumstances, had I been the bitten employee, I would have been happy to let Pnut live, take 4 shots for rabies, and face the vanishingly small risk of contracting the disease.

The real question is why things were done the way they were.

Pnut’s owner, Mark Longo, was in the process of getting a permit to keep Pnut as an educational animal. Having been rescued as a tiny orphan on a Manhattan street, Pnut was hopeless as a wild squirrel, so his only chance at survival was to remain a pet. If the paperwork had been allowed to process, Pnut would have been fine. Maybe Fred had to go, but that should have been a separate issue.

Ordinarily, I don’t get upset by shocking stories of cruelty in faraway places, but I was very disturbed by Pnut’s story. I still don’t like reading about it. Longo was extremely attached to him. Pnut was very affectionate to him. He climbed around on Longo and let him kiss him. He wasn’t doing anyone any harm. He brightened people’s days and reminded them of the power and importance of love.

Longo says he was imprisoned in his bathroom for about 5 hours while armed cops and other ethically-challenged stooges searched his house. Over a squirrel and a raccoon he had tried to help. He didn’t have a filthy house full of hoarded animals. He wasn’t making meth. He wasn’t trafficking kids or building bombs. He fed a squirrel and a coon.

I lost a pet three years ago, and it was very traumatic. I had had him for 30 years, and the infection he caught should have been easy to cure. I mismanaged his treatment, and I took him to a vet who turned out to be a quack. The guilt was crushing. I still hate thinking about it. Now Longo blames himself for failing Pnut. I know how that feels. He should not have had to experience this.

Of course, people will say the cops and other government employees were only following orders. The Einsatzgruppen defense. Nobody wants a mean letter in their employment file.

Sometimes when your boss tells you to do something, you’re supposed to refuse and risk discipline. It’s better than disgracing yourself with cowardice at incalculable, irremediable expense to the innocent.

Conservatives are taking up Pnut’s cause. That’s understandable. We’re not the ones who love sending government agents into people’s houses over trivial things. We’re not the ones who took a boy out of his parent’s home and put him in foster care with a pervert because the parents refused to pretend he was a girl. You can find that story if you Google. We’re not the ones who try to block adoptions, condemning desperate children to lives of rejection, because prospective parents exercise their civil rights and own firearms.

Kamala Harris says she wants to send agents into the homes of people who have not committed crimes–that means you and me–to check and see how we store our guns. While they’re committing this egregious, Satanic violation of our civil rights, who knows what else they’ll see that they can use to abuse us? Bibles, maybe. Trump paraphernalia. Gas stoves.

I wish the people who did this could be jailed. All of them. The cops. The animal control people. Every last one of them. They should have to sit in cells and think about the pain they caused for no good reason.