Quote Originally Posted by Skoalbasher View Post
I'm sorry, I feel bad for the rats I feed my snake, because I don't like the screeching noise they make, but it has to be done. What else is there to say? "The rat doesn't suffer", I would think if it's a fast death or not, the rat is picked up, thrown in an unknown environment and then attacked by a snake.
There's a lot more that goes into responsible live feeding then "picked up, thrown in". I feed a lot of snakes a lot of rats. Most if not pretty much all of the rats have no concept of what that snake is about to do to them. They've been bred in captivity so long that most of them have no strong prey reactions left in them. I've watched rats literally walk up and sniff the snake's nose - not seeming to have the instinct left in them that says "that is a predator there".

Those squeels you hear aren't sighs of relaxation. To say the rat doesn't suffer is only half right. May not suffer when they are caught, but they surely suffer before hand.
What suffering "before hand"? Please explain what you mean about the time between being "caught" and "before hand". As far as squeels I hear, I can tell you that a snake used to taking live prey, being offered the right size live prey on a consistent basis does not give the rodent much chance to make much noise. It's a rare thing here to hear anything from the snake tubs other than WHUMPPPP as the snake hits, efficiently contains and immediately constricts it's dinner. The rats don't have a chance to squeel a great percentage of the time and in fact if Mike and I hear any squeeling we're concerned the feeding is not going as well as it should.

So really there's nothing to say except, do it, or get rid of the snake.
Helping a new owner is, in my opinion, worth the keystrokes and involves a lot more (especially when it comes to safe live feeding) than just "do it, or get rid of the snake".