Austin Muhs was the darling of Nextdoor.com when he was using the platform to save horses and vulnerable animals during the Palisades wildfire. Now, they’ve kicked him to the digital curb.
When the tech giant was in need of some feel-good publicity last year, its PR team wasted no time helping the Santa Monica animal rescuer secure a feature story in People magazine.
“When a post appears on Nextdoor asking for guidance to help care for injured birds, or how to protect vulnerable creatures like motherless possums and squirrels, neighbors often post a simple solution: Contact Austin,” a company rep boasted.
Muhs quickly gained national fame for coming to the aid of sick and injured creatures on a moment’s notice.
Then last week, Nextdoor turned on its own poster boy — and local neighbors are ready to riot.
STANDING IN SUPPORT
“He has been a wonderful rescuer of animals… and now he’s being thrown aside,” Wilshire-Montana resident Karen C. raged on a thread that quickly blew up with hundreds of comments. “Kind of gotta call BS on this. PS – let’s see how long it takes for ME to get banned!”
The drama began when Muhs –– who also runs a successful pet detective agency that employs blood hounds and drones to reunite owners with their lost fur babies –– opened his phone to discover his account was “indefinitely suspended.”
“There was no warning, no email, no explanation,” Muhs tells The Sun. “Just a message saying I violated some sort of community guidelines.”
The company does not offer customer service by phone, so he reached out for help through the app on September 13. Six days later, still radio silence.
The Sun has also requested comment from Nextdoor’s media relations team, but received no reply.
Now, in the ultimate irony, angry neighbors are weaponizing the company’s own platform to rescue the rescuer.
“I contacted Nextdoor, and they said basically that it was none of my business and to kick rocks,” one user posted.
“Nextdoor is arbitrary and capricious,” added another, noting that users are left with little recourse –– even when automated systems make a mistake.
A MAN OF MANY HATS
Muhs, 40, is far from your average neighborhood app user. Originally from Dallas, Texas, he spent years playing in bands, working in concert and lighting production and even running a local recording studio before landing in the animal rescue business.
His journey began in 2017 during Hurricane Harvey, where he was deployed as a civilian volunteer for national disaster response. What started as a passion project quickly spiraled into a massive local calling.
“The first year I did bird or animal rescue locally, I think I had one case,” Muhs recalls. “The year after, maybe two. Then it went to 20, and then it just exploded into the hundreds. Word travels fast when someone is willing to come to your house and help you.”
Today, Muhs says he still gets three to five calls a day just for injured squirrels — even during slow seasons.
While he works with a network of regional rehabbers and relies heavily on a loyal coordinator to help route calls, Muhs remains the boots-on-the-ground lifeline Westside residents have come to count on.
SEWER CHIHUAHUAS AND GERRY THE GIRAFFE
His pet detective business is on call around the clock. Rates start around $500 per day, but he notes, “Our success rate is quite high.”
Predictably, the job comes with its fair share of wild cases.
“I had one client put down a deposit because she thought her Chihuahua had gone down into the sewer system late at night,” Muhs laughs. “I had a team ready to get city permits and go into the manholes before she canceled last minute.”
He was once called in to track a deer that swallowed a bone at the Hollywood Reservoir and coordinated logistics to potentially evacuate Gerry the Giraffe during the recent L.A. fires. One time he was even asked to track down a lost wolf.
“My team member, an ex-Marine, looked at me and said, ‘Look, you don’t find a wolf. A wolf finds you,'” Muhs remembers.
BANNED BY A BOT?
Muhs suspects his sudden account termination wasn’t the work of a disgruntled neighbor, but rather an unfeeling automated bot. Shortly before his account vanished, he sent roughly 20 direct messages to community members regarding a local event he was involved with—a classic trigger for anti-spam algorithms.
While Nextdoor’s A.I. surveillance continues to lock out the man who stepped up during COVID-19 to deliver toilet paper to seniors and clean up neighborhood graffiti, Muhs isn’t letting the outage stop his mission.
“I just work a full day every day, and whatever comes, comes,” he says.
For now, Westside residents needing help with injured wildlife or lost pets can find Muhs on TikTok (@RescueLA3) and Instagram (@AustinMuhs999).
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