Puerto Rican influencer Juan Otero, known as Yo Soy el Bori Tours on Instagram for documenting his trips to the island’s beaches and rivers, went to a hospital on Monday after realizing the animal he caught was a mongoose, a main carrier of the rabies virus. He had grabbed the animal believing it was a "Puerto Rican squirrel" — the person filming him said the same, though commenters later corrected them.
"It looks like a Pokémon," Otero exclaimed in his initial post, which shows him holding the squirming animal in his hand and later riding in a car with it. Health Secretary Víctor Ramos Otero warned that mongooses are dangerous animals and must be presumed to have rabies, and that bites are reported to the Department of Health, with mongoose bites always placed under treatment because most wild mongooses in communities have rabies.
The agency urged people not to handle mongooses and to seek special hospital treatment after any contact, even without a bite or scratch. In a later video, Otero said he grabbed the animal thinking it was a ferret, which is illegal to own in Puerto Rico without a permit, and that the visit was protocol: the mongoose did not bite or scratch him.
He said he already went to the relevant authorities. The animal’s fate is unknown, and the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DRNA) has not yet responded to a request for comment.