The New York man whose pet alligator Albert was confiscated by state officials warns animal owners they could be coming for you next after a squirrel rescuer’s beloved buddy P’Nut was just seized, too — and killed.
“I think there’s a bigger plan behind all this,” Tony Cavallaro told The Post on Sunday. “They’re going after innocent people to see how far they can get away with us.”
Cavallaro said he was horrified when he heard about the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s treatment of P’Nut, a rehabilitated squirrel who was kept as a pet by New Yorker Mark Longo.
The agency stormed Longo’s Pine City house Wednesday and seized the animal along with his pet raccoon Fred. The DEC said it had to kill the wild pets to test them for rabies because they had been interacting closely with humans.
“It’s just really sad, that squirrel didn’t do nothing,” Cavallaro said, adding that he knew all too well how powerless Longo must have felt during the DEC’s raid.
“I’m so sorry for what they went through. There’s nothing they could do,” he said of Longo and his wife.
Cavallaro has been battling the DEC for nearly eight months since Albert was taken from him in March.
The alligator – who Cavallaro had for 34 years and housed in an elaborate pen in his own home — has since been transported to an “adventure park” in Texas.
Cavallaro is now trying to have Albert at least transported to a sanctuary he trusts.
As for the DEC, Cavallaro has nothing but disgust and mistrust.
“They are just dirty, dirty organization. I don’t know what they’re trying to do to us, but there is no justification,’’ he said.
The DEC said it had to take Albert because it was illegal for Cavallaro to keep him — a claim which he staunchly refutes, insisting he tried numerous times to renew his longtime permit for Albert but that the agency refused to respond for years.
Cavallaro called the agency’s treatment of Longo — who said he was treated like “a terrorist” during their five-hour raid — was all too familiar, recalling how armed officers tore his house apart as they stormed his home for Albert.
Longo had been caring for P’Nut for seven years after he rescued him as a baby when his mother was struck by a car.
He only kept the squirrel because it simply wouldn’t leave once it had been nursed to health — so P’Nut became a quasi pet, beloved not just by Longo but also by about 3 million people who followed him on social media.
But all that came crashing down Wednesday when the DEC showed up and took P’Nut and Fred. Those animals were targeted — and not the others on Longo’s property — because they lived in the house.
Both animals were subsequently killed by the DEC because of the threat of rabies and such wild animals living with humans, state officials have said. An agent claimed P’Nut bit them on the hand during the raid, too.
