[P9CCd35R]

Well, the issue deals with purpose...if an animal is killed to feed another, there is a purpose to it. I would never kill an animal just to see it dead. Now, granted, in many respects I feel far more comfortable with my tortoises...its definitely easier on my family and my conscience to feed lettuce and dandelion...but I have the snakes, and it is my responsibility to feed them. The frozen stuff is dead already...the live stuff will be dead...so what is the difference? Maybe being frozen to death is less cruel than being eaten alive...i'll grant you that. But the larger snakes eat mice, and I kill them first...unpleasant, but its faster and less cruel than freezing (or suffocating with CO2...). I'm not thrilled with their feeding needs.....as much as I love snakes, I may eventually faze them out of my life.....(but they are easy to breed...) I also have cats. They are carnivores.....their food was killed...then processed. But because there is a great distance between my cats and their formerly living food, I don't notice it....my snakes bring me back to the same reality that applies to my cats....or my own dinner. Getting back to purpose: my objection was that I felt the killing was gratuitous. I love toads...in my younger years I have "rescued" toads that were being eaten by garter snakes...but without killing the snake. However, in the natural scheme of things, toads are a natural food of garters. And unlike the golden toad, now extinct, Bufo americanus and Bufo woodhousei fowleri are extremely abundant animals, with boom and bust population patterns. I have seen years when toad populations exploded to the point where it was impossible to walk down a street at night without stepping on them. Garter snakes are a natural population control, and good population controls actually ensure the health of the prey population. Now...am I encouraging people? Perhaps...although I doubt that substantial numbers of listmembers are rushing out to buy snakes and live pinkies...My objection is not to the death of an animal....as I said before, I am not into the whole "animal rights" attitude (well, I can say that I am a member of PETA...person who eats tasty animals...) and I am not sentimental. I just hate to see an animal killed for no valid reason. The first snake I ever saw was a garter snake...split in the head by a machete by a gardener. I've seen perfectly normal people go out of there way to stomp snakes into blood pudding...why? because it was a snake. I'm just not into purposeless killing. I see a mosquito in my house, I kill it...I see a spider in my house (and I have many...) I leave it alone. Besides, that spider may someday eat the mosquito....Take care, Eric