ELMIRA, New York — Bon forage, little buddies.
Hundreds of loyal fans of P’Nut the rescue squirrel and Fred the racoon packed an upstate New York bar on Friday to memorialize the euthanized pets that captured the nation.
Locals amassed at the Ill Eagle Taphouse in Elmira to commemorate the lives of the two little critters who were put down by the Department of Environmental Conservation last week.
P’Nut and Fred’s former guardian Mark Longo addressed the sizable crowd with a drink in hand.
“Raise your glasses for Fred and for P’Nut,” Longo intoned.
“We won’t let them die in vain.”
Mourners listened to live music, bought t-shirts for $20 and drank beers and custom cocktails — including “Fred Juice” (apple cider sangria) and “The P’Nut” (a spiked chai latte martini).
The t-shirts read “JUSTICE/PEANUT & FRED,” accompanied by cartoon drawings of a squirrel and a raccoon.
The rabid fans bore a range of demeanors — some solemn and others cutting a more party-friendly impression.
Kyle Evans, 29, showed up wearing a brown squirrel jumpsuit that he purchased online.
“We’re here for P’Nut the squirrel,” he said of himself and his two friends who downed beers.
“He was taken wrongly and wrongly euthanized.”
“I think they overstepped. They overreached. The squirrel wasn’t causing harm to anyone. It was on TikTok. It was famous. It wasn’t doing anything to anyone. It was supporting a good cause…. I don’t see anything good that could have come out of it,” Evans added to The Post.
Martin Perry and his wife Debbie were among the attendees who felt P’Nut’s cause hit closer to home.
“Just hearing about the whole incident is aggravating to say the least,” Perry, 64, told The Post.
“They come down here and take his animals and kill his animals… He has an animal farm sanctuary. It’s ridiculous.”
Perry, who bought t-shirts for himself and his wife, felt party politics played a part in the tragic ordeal.
“It’s terrible. I have a lot of friends who are Democrats but I call the Democratic politicians ‘Dumbo-crats.’ Look what they did to this young man and the squirrel.”
“It’s maddening,” Perry said, adding, “I’m pissed off at New York State.”
Debbie Perry, 59, told The Post, “It made me sick to my stomach that they can take an animal that was saved by someone and they take it and kill it.”
The parents of P’Nut’s owner also attended the services.
“It’s absolutely horrible and someone needs to pay for it,” Denise Longo, 57, told The Post.
“All Mark is doing is trying to save animals. P’Nut was the cornerstone of that.”
Mark Longo Sr. was similarly vexed and wants to see institutional change.
“I think it was horrible the way they made their decisions to go about it. It was totally disgusting. The system needs to change.”
“We want to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Longo Sr., 59, added.
Proceeds from the night will go towards funding Longo’s animal rescue charity “P’Nut’s Freedom Farm” in Pine City, New York.
A GoFundMe in honor of P’Nut and Fred has already raised over $219,000.
Last week, the tale of P’Nut and Fred went viral. Hundreds of thousands of posts on X and TikTok made the rounds — even being discussed by Elon Musk and podcaster Joe Rogan in the lead up to the presidential election.
