In2017, Mark Longo, an electrical engineer in his early 30s, was living in New York City and saw a squirrel had been run over by a car. She’d left a baby behind.

“As I got closer, a little black ball of fuzz crawled up my leg,” Longo recalled. He took the squirrel home. He thought to raise it, then release it?

But ‘Peanut’ became domesticated, like his cat. And Longo had an idea for a business. He’d film himself masturbating and sell it on OnlyFans, with scenes with his pet squirrel.

By 2022, Longo was the established porn actor known as ‘Squirrel Daddy’.

His OnlyFans tagline: “Peanut’s dad, VERY kinky player 😈🔥” Sometimes he listed the squirrel’s name as ‘Pnut’, which seems in this context a sexual reference, i.e. evoking ‘penis’ and ‘nut’, which is slang for ejaculation.

Longo is said to live with his wife, Daniela, on a rural, farm-like property in Pine City, New York. Is she his unseen photographer?—recording her husband out displaying his penis, his asshole, etc., all in a very gay style.

Then Peanut was also the focus of cute and cuddly scenes in TikTok videos, or on Instagram.

Mark and Peanut were adorable together, staged like a father coming home to the squirrel this childless man had “rescued.”

These appearances, on reflection, were ads for his porn account. He offered Peanut the squirrel as his fun, sweet pet — while he allured with his body. Maybe you’d pay to see more?

Longo was covered in mainstream media.

He presented Peanut as having a denatured sexual character. “Usually, when they mature, after eight months to a year, you see the aggression, you can see the hormones, but Peanut didn’t have it,” he said.

He’d narrate a scene of having tried to release Peanut into the wild, only to see the squirrel arriving at his back door, having lost half his tail in a fight.

“So here I am, balling my eyes out, like I failed you as your human,” as Longo told USA Today. “And I kind of opened the door, he ran inside, and that was the last of Peanut’s wildlife career.”

The use of “career” there is interesting.

As I consider Longo’s accounts, I find that I often disbelieve him. And certainly his suggestion he tried to let Peanut go seems unlikely. The squirrel had become his livelihood.

And Longo didn’t film the supposed parting scene.

That he was a porn star, and Peanut a prop in his act, was always clear. It was covered in various newsy sites.

Meanwhile, Longo opened an ‘animal sanctuary’ in 2023.

Or he said he did. As often with Longo’s accounts, the details are vague and strange. Was the location of the ‘sanctuary’ Longo’s personal home in Pine City?—now designated as a non-profit to accept donations.

The website has no physical address, and visitors are not allowed.

Peanut was the focus of “multiple anonymous complaints.”

That is one presentation of the facts in mainstream media. I was interested in the history of Longo’s interactions with state officials, but he hasn’t discussed any of that—only the now-famous scene.

On Wednesday, October 30th, officers from the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) raided Longo’s “sanctuary.” Longo’s details shift between accounts. Sometimes there were six officers.

“And 10 to 12 DEC officers raided my house as if I was a drug dealer,” he narrated to FoxNews. “I sat outside my house for five hours. I had to get a police escort to my bathroom.”

Peanut is said to have bitten an officer.

Without quoting sources or identifying any officials, the FoxNews story says that Peanut was “euthanized” for rabies testing. But squirrels don’t spread rabies, and a raccoon that Longo kept was also killed.

Longo quickly set up a Gofundme account, seeking $120,000, at first for legal aid to secure Peanut’s release, then for the upkeep of his ‘rescued’ animals. The heartbreak of he and his wife was reported as extreme.

“Despite our passionate outcry for compassion, the agency chose to ignore our pleas, leaving us in deep shock and grief.”

Then he took to tabloid media.

It was a story ready for TMZ: a beautiful man and his pet squirrel. Longo supplied new details, like that the government agents had been so intrusive and overbearing as to check his wife’s immigration status.

I wondered to myself: Did a gay guy buy a mail-order blonde bride as heterosexual cover, getting her to film his sex show starring a rodent?

With Peanut dead, she might be out of a job.

It was then noticed by the right-wing.

And in the days leading up to the 2024 presidential election, the sexy man with a dead pet squirrel became, very suddenly, a national obsession. All day on Saturday, November 2nd, right-wing America was watching Longo’s videos—not the OnlyFans ones. They had no idea of the porny origins of the material they were consuming.

There was mostly just Longo himself, in his striking physicality and tender emotions, telling the story of a strange relationship, illegal but touching. On his behalf, millions were heartbroken.

America is a place I try not to try to explain, but the connecting thread might be that media chatter, months ago, about Republicans hating “cat ladies.” So now, they were all about the “squirrel daddy.”

Grief for Peanut cut across political lines.

But Peanut quickly became a symbol of right-wing concerns about the current regime as could seem indifferent to crime, like illegal immigration, and yet hyper-vigilant about illegal pets.

Peanut was imagined as a victim of the state—seized and executed—who returned as a potent symbol of revolutionary Republican politics.

Peanut’s death was offered as a prime example of government run amok.

The squirrel episode was carefully explained as a prime example of authoritarian government.

The memes were coming, hard and fast.

Racking up millions of views, it was an orgy of surreal right-wing imagination, both tragic and humorous, focused on a presidential election and a dead squirrel—in his little cowboy hat!

Then Elon Musk got involved, offering up Star Wars Jedi master “Obi PNut Kenobi”…to 64 million views, and counting.

A vote for Donald Trump was framed as a vote to avenge Peanut.

That may be a reasonable reading, as Peanut’s death is truly an outrage that should prompt serious inquiry about government power.

But had the right wing known more about Longo, I’d expect there to have been far less interest. They happened to see him, liked his smile, arms, ass, and his bulging crotch, which were all on glorious display.

I guess ‘Peanut’ was the squirrel Republican porn show that America didn’t know it would be into.