Originally published on E! Online

Fans say goodbye Peanut the squirrel and Fred the raccoon.

Two days after the owner of the animals, Mark Longosaid they had been seized by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), the agency confirmed to NBC News that the critters had been euthanized to test for rabies.

The animals were taken Oct. 30 after DEC officials learned they were “sharing a residence with humans, creating the potential for human exposure to rabies,” the agency said in a joint statement with the Chemung County Department of Health. The statement also said that Peanut had bitten one of the officers involved in the investigation.

The DEC began investigating the animals’ living conditions after it received “multiple reports from the public regarding the potentially unsafe housing of wild animals that could transmit rabies and the illegal keeping of wild animals as pets,” the organization said in a statement to the Associated Press. .

Longo, who operates a wildlife sanctuary called P’Nuts Freedom Farm Animal Sanctuary, tearfully reacted to the news on social media along with his wife: Dani.

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“It is with great sadness that we share this heartbreaking news,” they wrote on Peanut’s Instagram page on November 1. “Despite our passionate pleas for compassion, the agency has chosen to ignore our pleas, leaving us deeply shocked and saddened… were precious, and we refuse to accept this loss in silence.”

He added in a video: “Peanut was the best thing that ever happened to us.”

Longo had been caring for Peanut for seven years, dating back to when he said he saw the squirrel’s mother hit by a car. Over the years, the duo regularly posted video content online, amassing a social media audience of over 536,000 followers on Instagram and another 424,000 followers Facebook.

Although Longo told the AP he was aware that owning a wild animal without a permit is illegal in New York, he said he was pursuing paperwork to certify Peanut as an “educational animal.”

As for Fred, Longo insisted he was merely rehabilitating the raccoon after an injury and planned to release the nocturnal mammal back into the wild, the outlet reported.

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