Famous Instagram squirrel Peanut the Squirrel has been euthanized by New York State. The seven-year-old gray squirrel was confiscated by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEC) after anonymous reports of wild animals being kept at the home of his owner, Mark Longo, 34.
The news made waves on the internet. Social media users are outraged by the authorities’ actions. Since New York State Governor Kathy Hochul is a Democrat, Republican voters are seizing the incident as an opportunity to attack Democrats. First and foremost: Elon Musk.
Elon Musk, who is known for his memes and has openly supported Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy since September, wasted no time in posting a political meme about Peanut’s death. In it, he accuses the Democrats of having their priorities wrong because they kill a squirrel but do not sufficiently address other dangers such as murderers and rapists.
Donald Trump Jr. also jumped on the peanut bandwagon. His tweet has a similar message to Musk’s, although Trump’s son appears to be less versed in the art of memes than the world’s richest man.
Republican opinion leaders aren’t the only ones using the squirrel for political messaging. Voters also post hundreds of memes in which Donald Trump protects the squirrel, or Peanut watches over the presidential candidate as a guardian angel, as well as other similar messages. One user even predicted a landslide victory for Trump thanks to Peanut.
Among the many political posts, there are also some users who simply mourn the animal.
An account called Peanut, which was opened in April and it is not clear whether it belongs to Peanut’s owner, compared the squirrel to the gorilla Harambe in a post.
Harambe was a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo who was euthanized by authorities in 2016 when a child fell into his enclosure. Back then, too, the animal’s tragic death caused an outcry on social media – and the gorilla became an internet legend.
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