Please Stand Up for Snakes

[Guest guest]

Hello:

 

I am requesting that all of you please take a moment to write in and

voice your concern about the upcoming rattlesnake round-up. It is

beyond me the sadism that takes place at these events. Rattlesnake

round ups take place every year all over the United States. The

purpose of these is to go out and capture as many rattlesnakes as

possible. The snakes are then killed for no real reason. The people

who host these events give out false snake bite information to

install fear into people and to make it seem like the ruthless

murder of helpless animals is justifiable.

 

There are few animals as feared and as hated as the snake. However

people truly have nothing to fear from these gentle and

misunderstood animals. Snakes are very shy, secretive, and generally

docile creatures that try to avoid conflict when ever possible. The

only way for a snake to possibly hurt a person is if it bites.

However snakes bites are extremely easy to avoid. When a person

comes in contact with a snake the snake's first instinct will be to

flee the area and find shelter. If the snake doesn't't do this it

may just stay perfectly still to try and blend in with its

surroundings. If the snake is captured it may still not resort to

biting, proof of their gentle demeanor. The snake has a number of

other tactics it can resort to opposed to biting. The snake may

hiss, make mock strikes with a closed mouth, or flail around. Snakes

bites on humans usually only happen when someone is severely

agitating and harassing the snake either when corning it or handling

it.

 

Almost 70% of snake bites on people occur on or near the hands or

fingers, the bites happen here because the people are actually

handling the snakes at the time of the harassment. If you leave the

snake alone it is almost impossible to be bitten! If you do

encounter a snake just walk around it and leave it alone and it will

not harm you in anyway. The other percent of people bitten are those

who may accidentally step on a snake in the wild, this too can be

easily avoided if care is taking to be as aware as possible when

hiking in natural areas and to carefully watch your step. Even when

a venomous snake bites a person there is a good chance that the

snake didn't't even inject venom. Snakes have venom first and

foremost to subdue there prey, since they don't have arms to hold on

to it, so a means of subduing prey is necessary. The venom also

helps the snake digest its meal. When the venom is injected it helps

to break the prey down for the snake since snakes don't chew there

food, but swallow it whole. As we are too big for snakes to eat the

snakes will not want to waste their venom on biting us. Even if the

snake does inject venom proper medical treatment and anti-venom can

usually save the persons life. Only about 0.2% of people bitten by

snakes in United States die from the bite. Similar statistics apply

to Australia which is home to over 60 kinds of potently venomous

snakes. It is estimated to be even less in Europe. As said before,

these bites could have easily been avoided.

 

All these facts show that snakes are not aggressive or evil animals.

If you go and harass and capture a wild animal what can you expect

except to be bitten since the animal is going to try and defend

itself? Looking a things perceptively, if you went a grabbed a 'cute

and cuddly' little squirrel off a tree it would certainly bite and

scratch you. Snakes are no different. That being said, snakes should

not be viewed as are enemies but are friends. Snakes do a lot for

people. First off snakes are great controllers of rodents like rats

and mice. Without snakes rodents populations would sky-rockets and

these creatures would destroy are crops, effecting are food

industries and costing us millions of dollars. Rodents also spread

diseases which could seriously affect our health. Snakes are great

at hunting rodents because they can crawl into small burrows and

other areas that rodents use as shelters. These places are too small

for other animals to get into. Secondly snakes are helping save the

lives of millions of people every year. Snake venom is being used in

the medical field to treat all sorts of aliments, like heart and

stroke disease, cancer, Parkinson's, blood clots, and more. Heart

and stroke disease alone kills around 16 million people every year.

So snakes are helping to make medicine that could save millions.

 

Despite the harmless nature of snakes and the good things they do

for us, we as people go out of there way to kill and torture them.

Over 125,000 rattlesnakes are killed from rattlesnake's roundups

ever year. Snakes are brutally tortured (kicking, stomping,

whipping, burned, skinned alive, having their mouths sewn shut) and

then killed by decapitation. Others are sold and killed for their

skin. Snakes are living, breathing, creatures that do not deserve to

be killed for no reason. It is beyond sick and demented to host an

entire event around killing an animal because of our fear and

ignorance! A fear of snakes is inherent, so we must learn this as

not to pass our irrational fears on to our children. It is an awful

thing to live in fear. I hope people consider the fact that they

would never go and support a festival that slaughtered and tortured

dogs and cats in such a fashion, so why do we support it for snakes?

I hope people will not support round ups and let these interesting

and valuable creatures live free from our needless persecution.

 

Below is the link to the State Regulatory Agency in charge of these

roundup. I know this is not an Ontario Issue, but it is so important

that those who do care speak up for the creatures who have no voice

in which to speak themselves.

 

Thank you for your time.

 

 

 

http://www.fish.state.pa.us/promo/form/web_emails.htm