Can't stand this

[Daigga]

Bit of a rant ahead, but I honestly don't even know what to say to people around here anymore.

While relaxing at home today after a long day of taking care of the baby and mentally preparing myself to work tomorrow, I check Facebook only to find a picture of a very dead (and grossly mutilated) texas rat snake on a local for sale group asking for an ID on the snake. There were a few comments of "rat snake" and/or "good job". For someone like me who loves animals, seeing pictures and comments like these are a punch in the gut to say the least. Sadly, it's not even the first dead snake I've seen or heard of this week...

I live in a part of Texas where anything that isn't a cat, dog, or domesticated livestock is viewed as a pest and better off dead. Snakes, opossums, racoons, armadillos, bobcats, hogs and whatever else may wander through are frequently killed and bragged over, and you just can't tell people that those animals are around for a reason. Every week my nephew comes to my parents house, gun in hand, and goes off to the creek with his dad to shoot at the snakes there (cottonmouths, rat snakes, and bullsnakes, mostly), and if I try to explain why they shouldn't I get laughed at and called some rather unfair names.

How do you convince people that these are living, ecologically important animals that feel what you do when you saw off their heads or crush their bodies? How do you reverse the mindset everyone around me seems stuck in where "the only good snake is a dead snake"? What do you say? What should I say? Can you even change people's minds when it comes to these terrible situations? I've gotten so discouraged lately that I end up saying nothing, but I just don't even low what to do anymore...