Beware of the snake man

[JoshSloane]

Boom, you think this is funny because to you it's ludicrous that someone would actually take pets and feed it to other pets.

I have first hand knowledge about how this very much isn't the case. A few months back on tumblr there was a user who kept a burm, who advocated trapping as a way to feed large constrictors cheaply. At first they said they only trapped pest species and let others go, but later they admitted they would trap dogs and cats. Not just strays either, they'd trap animals that they knew to be neighbors pets because they felt in the right at the animals where trespassing on their property after they'd warned the owners to keep them confined to their own yards.

This person saw absolutely nothing wrong with this, and maintained that they were totally in the right, even in the face of massive criticism from the rest of the tumblr reptile community. They even linked youtube how to videos to encourage others to do this. That's how mess up this was. Eventually we got the youtube channel taken down and they deleted their blog to avoid anymore backlash. It only would have taken one PETA or HSUS nut finding that blog before they scampered to make a whole lot of trouble for the rest of us though. The biggest problem for the reptile hobby as a whole is that it's looked at with fear and suspicion by those outside of it, and it only takes one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch. That's why we need to present a united image of rational, reasonable, sane, and responsible pet owners. When people like that do pop up, it's up to us to call them on it, or else go down with them when the inevitable crap storm hits the public fan.

Are you kidding me? An entire community on Tumblr sat back and just complained about this? Why didn't anybody actually get up from their keyboard and do something about this? Why didn't YOU do something? Simply sitting there and talking about it, and getting their youtube channel taken down does nothing. HSUS and PETA DEFINITELY needed to be contacted about that, not to mention police.

My point is, as a reptile community we need to identify and condemn these psychos who feed cats and dogs to snakes. If people are going to see us as respectable and responsible exotic pet owners, WE OURSELVES need to do more to prevent this from happening. Not just sit back and hope that the general public doesn't find out.