Reptile & Amphibian Forums

killing our hobby.

Here's a few more examples of the way big snakes have screwed the rest of us by feeding free kittens and puppies to large constrictors.

Read/watch/look at them and weep.

And none of these refer to the case I had to deal with at the AHA when I lived in AZ. There are a couple of other members on this forum who had to deal with the media in AZ because of some of the IDIOTS in this hobby.

I have more of these if you need more proof. And you all wonder why some of the rest of us in the herp hobby look at you all with a jaded eye.

http://terrariummorbidum.wordpress.com/2007/04/24/man-to-be-sentenced-in-case-of-puppy-being-fed-to-snake/

http://www.pet-abuse.com/cases/6133/FL/US/

http://www.venomousreptiles.org/articles/117

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPnD3veGk8U

http://lovelifelikeyourself.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/python-ate-family-dog-in-front-of-children/

http://www.yappi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192819

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/helpless-animals-beg-for-justice

groups.yahoo.com/phrase/free-cats-and-kittens-pets

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/551613/no_free_kittens_free_to_good_home_is.html
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Vichris
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane"- Marcus Aurelius

You have some good points but they are not just attacking big snake owners. What we need to do is make sure the regs that get passed will be effective regs and that they will be narrow so they don't hurt keepers of harmless species. Originally this ban would have affected ball pythons, childrens pythons, green tree pythons, etc.
So it is clear that they are using big snakes to attack as much of the hobby as they can. This is common. Many cities have ordinances prohibiting snakes over 8 feet, 6 feet, 4 feet, constricting snakes, etc.
The responsible course of action is not to just throw our hands in the air or point the finger and say I told you so.
Many, many hobbyist agree with you in spirit, that is, we see the need to regulate truely dangerous species. But we all need to get involved in order to make sure the regs are limited to those species alone.

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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

several of those seem to reference the same case in Arizona (puppy fed to python), one references a man in Bulgaria, and some just mention the possibility of it occuring.
So you found 2 A-holes and decided it's rife? By that logic, murder is "common", and we need to ban humans
Anecdotes are not data. Seriously, have you ever taken a statistics class? I admit my statistics was mostly bio-stats, rather than pure mathematical statistics (I doubt I could do a variable correlation if my life depended on it).

laws already in place deal with that.

I'll freely admit I don't have an emotional problem feeding unwanted mammals to snakes; I feed them rats and rabbits, which also make dang good pets (seriously, I had and loved pet rats growing up). Just don't mistreat them beforehand and don't obtain them under false pretenses.
What makes an animal food versus a pet never made sense to me at all, and globally there certainly isn't a consensus; see China eating dogs, Argentina eating G-pigs, people keeping hogs as pets, etc. Hell, I love goat meat but want a pygmy goat as a pet.

I stumbled across a video years ago of some guys putting their big boa in with a goat and sitting back to watch as if they'd rented a movie. The possibilities were several: the goat would kill or badly injure the boa; the boa might kill the goat; if the boa tried to eat the goat it would die trying. The idiots' excitement and conversation was chilling. They didn't seem to put more value on either animal's life or well being than they would have on a roach.

It's one thing to eat meat from an animal you'd value as a pet under other circumstances. The way some people enjoy viewing the constrictor feeding process is sometimes very different. I still cringe when i see young kids buying feeder mice and barely able to wait til they get home to watch the spectacle. Watching it as a reminder of how our animals live (and die) in the wild is one thing. There's a different sort of pleasure and excitement some people get from watching, and it's spooky. When I'm aware enough to think about it, when I'm eating meat, I try to remember an animal gave its life for the meal, and there's a little bit of sadness in that (though I'm admittedly usually not thinking on that level). I more often felt that way putting 50 or 100 rat or mouse fuzzies into cages when I had my collection. Maybe it's the difference between feeding frozen rodents when possible, and feeding live, or between asking how your frozen rodents are put down, or not caring. Does that make any sense?

It sort of does. I almost puked the first time I had to stun a rodent to feed a snake with. I'm still not happy when I need to feed live (right now I have some baby house snakes that won't take f/t...sigh). But I'm also not partial to certain species over others. I've used reptiles as feeders, I've used rodents as feeders. I wouldn't have moral qualms about using dogs or cats as feeders either, apart from the bad PR. Hell, we eat pork, and pigs are pretty smart animals, at least on par with dogs. We eat beef, whereas some cultures consider cows sacred...but we turn up our noses at inverts, and they're nutritious, available and edible. They're also even dumber than cows.

Chris, I took the time to go over the links, and I have to say, their are people out there that will never be what they should. Take the family that watched the scrub python stalk their pet for days. They could have done something about it sooner, but chose not to, to their lament. And this was apparently a case of wild animal coming in for a snack in an area that borders the wild. if people choose to live on the edge, they will run into the fringe.
The guy punting kittens is in need of some serious discipline, in my opinion.
People should be honest in attempting to get feeder puppies or kittens, but breeders of puppies and kittens should be responsible that they have homes for their unwanted offspring.
I see no difference in feeding any prey size animal if you raise them yourself, I don't own boas or pythons because that is too much hassle for me and I don't find them as interesting as colubrids. I would feed feral cats to them if I did and have no qualms about it. It is our own f-d up mentality to release these things outside instead of properly caring for them, and as far as I'm concerned, feral cats will always be the #1 introduced species ruining the ecosystems.What is the difference in feeding any captive animal to another, if you raised them yourself? I know this makes me sound like a jerk, but since I don't feed puppies or kittens to my indigo or bull snakes, and raise my own rodents just for that purpose, I just don't see the difference. the fact they may be someone's lost pet is something that throws a wrench in the spokes though.
I eat meat and do not see eating farmed animals as them giving up their lives, hell, they don't have a choice, it is what they were made for.
You are an avid hunter Chris, and so am I, we take what we can eat, I am not in it for the horns, but for the meat. I seriously would never consider sharing my game with a python, lol! too tasty!
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Todd Hughes

Some of the videos that are on Youtube, etc...of these people narrating the feeding of rodents to their snakes is really disturbing for sure. The things they say while it's going on is really sick as well. The owning of snakes to many people is obviously to "get off" solely on watching them kill prey, nothing more.........geesh!, grow up people!

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

while most of what I've seen on that site is for shock value, and most are the younger generation, I still feel that this is the fringe element, and that older, more experienced keepers do not condone this behavior. Chris, you are smart, if the situation involved the banning of your guns, do you sit in the compound and defend it, or do you ban together with LIKE-MINDED individuals to fight it legally, no matter what the outcome, and to put forth ideas that could be used constructively to be a part of us having a say in policing our own hobby/businesses? I know that what happened in your city/state sucked for you, but I've lived with that regulation in my city for over 30 years, it can be addressed, to a point, and I think you could get back the mexicana easily, as well as any non-native that does not have the capacity to harm humans, such as the Big 5 and venomous. I learned to live with those regulations, and am by far the happier for doing so. i am not in fear of being strangled by my gophers and bulls, and will fight with everything I have to keep them, and, I will also support our being able to responsibly keep all the others, if we have a say in the regulations that are surely to be a part of anything we salvage. I don't ever want it said I sold out to keep what I like, I hope we can help you regain your love for the awesome animals you once had. Your thayeri were the first I ever owned and bred, and the joy they brought me has had an awesome impact on my life. I hope you can see that you were a big part of others lives as well, and will put your sights on the regs and politicians and special interst groups, not the few whackos that get their jollies on Youtube. If you watch those videos, you fuel their agenda by watching and not responding negatively, while on the other hand, most thrive on that negative attention. I choose not to spend the majority or minority of my time watching YouTube, lol!

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Todd Hughes

I don't ever sit around and watch the silliness on Youtube either as you might have already imagined..LOL!, but once in a great while, we see things here and there by accident that do go on in the mainstream that happen on a daily basis. Youtube has some EXTREMELY retarded videos viewable to anyone, and many of these videographers are candidates for insane asylums to be quite honest. Certainly NOT just snake eating videos either, but TONS of other nonsense.

Oh well, life goes on regardless, for most anyway, some of the Youtube morons will be dead before adulthood doing the silly crap they do, but it's a great way to wead-out faulty genetics..LOL!

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

LOL, the only problem is when a child sees these as "cool" and does this behind the parents' back, only to reap sorrow with broken bones, envenomations, or death. There are some good vids out there, but most is crap for shock value, something this generation values more highly than life. Sad.
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Todd Hughes

100% agreed Todd, shock value, and the stupidity that goes along with it is sadly a main staple in today's society.

Like jumping off the house roof onto a sturdy table with your back!..LOL!!,.....the idiot was in totally agony(as expected) from doing this extremely foolish stunt..LOL!

When several idiot's get together, they can seem to dream up some VERY idiotic things to do..

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

>>...Like jumping off the house roof onto a sturdy table with your back!..LOL!! .....When several idiot's get together, they can seem to dream up some VERY idiotic things to do..

Let's use a different word than idiot, just high-spirited, maybe inebriated, or having a wildly different perspective than you and I, or a different background...but most of all it's the excitement of the crowd, and peer pressure.

That's why i feel compelled to step in whenever the arguments on this forum move to absurd extremes. Somebody needs to say, "no, that's not right" or else the kids on the forum will think those ideas are ok too, and we'll all be jumping off roofs onto our backs. It's like speaking up when someone says something racist--or something dumb about snakes, to put it in a context most familiar to those of us here. We've all gotta do that.

You'd have to be extremely inebriated AND high spirited to jump off a roof onto your back onto a table, lol! I'm sorry but that IS just plain exhibitionism without regard to consequence, which is just STOOPID! What can one learn from breaking ones' back? A new way to "live"?
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Todd Hughes

LOL!!, I must agree, there isn't really a better descriptive word for the guy that did this on video other than just plain idiot!,...sorry Terry, but I can't really "sugar-coat" that one any..LOL!

Teenager's do some bizzare things when peer pressure and testosterone enter the scene. I know from experience myself, but even I as a "not afraid to do anything" kid would know better than to attempt a stupid life-threatening/disabling stunt like that..LOL!

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

my website -serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Smokin little variables Todd!
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Randy Whittington

thanks randy, Craig is getting one of those girls, I gots me some big plans in the future!
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Todd Hughes