Peanut the Squirrel

Mark Longo says he found Peanut in 2017 after the young squirrel's mother was struck by a car. Attempts to place him with a shelter failed, so Longo raised him and later tried releasing him. Peanut returned injured, stayed, and became the cowboy-hat-wearing star of short videos.

The audience eventually pointed toward P'Nuts Freedom Farm, the animal sanctuary Longo and Daniela Bittner opened in 2023. Peanut was therefore more than a generic internet image: his name and likeness were already tied to people, a place and a fundraising story before any token existed.

On October 30, DEC officers arrived at the Pine City property and seized Peanut and Fred. The agency said it was responding to complaints about illegally kept wildlife and possible human exposure to rabies. During the operation Peanut bit a person involved in the investigation.

According to the DEC supplemental incident record, Peanut and Fred were euthanized after the October 30 seizure, before the reporting officer left animal control at about 15:20. Authorities publicly confirmed the deaths on November 1; on November 12 Chemung County announced that both rabies tests were negative. The negative results did not undo the deaths and intensified the dispute over proportionality.

Pump.fun timestamps PNUT to October 31 at 14:21:41 UTC. Its first description did not announce a memorial. It said it was the community's job to help save Peanut and asked readers to sign a petition.

The launch turned a public rescue appeal into a traded asset. That appeal reflected uncertainty among supporters, even though DEC records place the deaths before launch. The later pnutsol.com narrative frames Peanut as a symbol of rescue and his death as a call for freedom.

The launch page attributes creation to HrHJput…sUcf and links @pnutsolana. It does not name Longo, Bittner or the sanctuary. In December, Longo said his lawyers had demanded that Binance stop unauthorized use of Peanut names and imagery. That demand was an allegation, not a judgment, but it punctured the easy assumption that a token bearing Peanut's face spoke for his caretaker.

Different actors could now control different pieces: the wallet had launched the coin, channel operators could rewrite its meaning, pools and exchanges could distribute it, and Longo could assert rights in the pre-existing story. None needed the others' keys to act.

Binance opened spot trading on November 11 with a Seed Tag. The site promoted Raydium and Jupiter swaps, a one-billion supply, zero taxes and burned liquidity. At review, the on-chain supply was slightly lower and both mint and freeze authorities were absent. The mint rules had become simple even as authorship stayed contested.

A buyer filed a PNUT-focused complaint against Pump.fun and its principals in January 2025, and the court consolidated it into Aguilar in June. The August 31, 2026 order expressly says PNUT was not among the twenty tokens underlying the operative Count III; the class-standing dismissal concerned eighteen other tokens. Carnahan and Okafor’s RICO claims against Baton, Alon Cohen, Dylan Kerler and Noah Tweedale survived at the pleading stage, without a final liability judgment or a ruling on PNUT’s security status. DEC separately announced new wildlife-enforcement protocols in March 2025. These proceedings did not settle who could speak in Peanut’s name.