Mark Kuhn, 62, was hit with three counts of poisoning an animal, a misdemeanor, for trapping the furry critters and dousing them in paint before cutting them loose.
“He said he didn’t want the squirrels in his backyard,” Putnam County SPCA Chief Ken Ross told The Post on Monday. “It makes his dogs bark, and he felt by spray-painting them they wouldn’t come back.
“He’d also be able to know if it’s the same squirrels coming back,” Ross added.
The SPCA, which has law enforcement powers, was first tipped off by the county probation department last week that Kuhn — who is on probation for an unrelated earlier bust — was tagging squirrels.
Ross said Kuhn allegedly trapped the harmless animals, stuck them in cages and sprayed them with apple red-colored Rust-Oleum Paint and Primer before cutting them loose about a quarter-mile away.
The department interviewed Kuhn over the weekend and charged him with three counts of poisoning or attempting to poison animals, a misdemeanor under New York State Agriculture and Markets Law.
Kuhn did not return a call from The Post seeking comment on Monday.
Meanwhile, Ross said the tainted squirrels have not been recovered but have been spotted a few times on surveillance video and have been the subject of several sightings by local residents.
“This is a first,” the chief said. “This is not something that we deal with every day. I mean, animal cruelty takes a lot of different forms and every day there’s something new.”