P’nut the squirrel was ratted out by someone — and his upstate owners think it was over jealousy.
Mark and Daniela Longo told The Post on Sunday that they had been cashing in on their furry Internet sensation — who helped steer followers to their raunchy OnlyFans page — before he was seized from their animal sanctuary and euthanized by state environmental officials over rabies fears last week.
The couple’s financial success, fueled at least partly by P’nut, may have been enough to drive someone to drop the dime on them — and their fluffy-tailed cash cow, they said.
“Maybe it’s someone who thinks I use this place to make a lot of money,” Mark said of his rescue farm.
“Did this do wonders to my OnlyFans?” Mark said of the site, where P’nut frolicked along with other animals. “Absolutely. It’s making a lot of money from this.”
The Longos said they bought their 350-acre spread near Elmira with the $800,000 that they made in one month posting their porn online — and P’nut then began pulling his own weight with his separate family-friendly fan base.
“I had my own kind of squirrel dad account, my own Instagram,” Mark Longo said. “And it’s me doing my workouts and a lot of the times, you know, I don’t have time to make [dual] content like I used to.
“I just tag my squirrel dad account from the peanut video I posted so it gets double the clip views,” he said. “Every once in a while, a shirtless photo [on P’nut’s page, too], but I completely separated myself from this entire thing. Obviously, people were going to find both and try to associate them.”
The Longos made headlines after the state Department of Environmental Conservation raided their upstate spread, “P’nuts Freedom Farm,” and grabbed their lovable furry pet and his pal, a raccoon named Fred — with both critters euthanized over rabies concerns because they were in close contact with humans.
Seen by many as victims of an overreaching state government, the couple have become local heroes.
“This morning at the supermarket, I wanted to get a few extra copies of The Post to keep for myself,” Longo said, referring to Sunday’s paper with the front-page headline, “Bushy Whacked.”
“When I walked in, [people] recognized my face because I was on the cover of the newspaper. And they just kind of smiled and nodded.
“Last night, my wife and I went out to dinner. We were having dinner, and the couple next to us looked over and said, ‘We’re so sorry for what happened, and we want you to know that you have our full support,’ ” he added. “Everybody was just noticing, and then they would tell us that you know they were sorry about what happened with P’nut.”
The squirrel’s death sparked so much outrage that it prompted a state lawmaker to propose legislation to improve animal-rights statutes, calling the bill “Peanuts Law: Humane Animal Protection Act.”
“What happened to P’nut was a tragedy,” state Assemblyman Jake Blumencranz said on X. “As a state lawmaker and an animal rights advocate, this tragedy can be an agent of change.”
The measure would mandate a 72-hour waiting period before an animal from a sanctuary can be put to sleep and creates an appeal system, while giving animal-refuge sites “the right to humane due process.”
P’nut’s death has sparked backlash from other pols, too.
The spokesman for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is reportedly eyeing a run for New York City mayor, trolled Gov. Kathy Hochul on X over her administration’s handling of P’nut
“When no one is minding the store & state agencies are allowed to act with impunity, this is how stuff like this happens,” wrote the rep, Rich Azzopardi. “This situation should have come across someone’s desk in
@GovKathyHochul’s office & someone with a brain should have stepped in.
“#Justice4Peanut”
GOP upstate US Rep. Marc Molinaro wrote online, “As a pet owner I feel for the Longos and I’m calling for Governor [Kathy] Hochul to issue an official apology for their ridiculous overreach.”
A gofundme.com page for P’nut has raised more than $132,000.
Neither Hochul’s office nor the DEC responded to requests for comment from The Post on Sunday.
