Rattlesnake Roundup Season Starts Now!

[FollowTheSun]

These kind of events only serve to reinforce people's hatred , ignorance, and fear of a creature that is very useful for our world. I think we would be horrified to picture our own pet snakes in the place of these rattlers. They are just minding their own business, eating all the rodents, trying their best to hide until they are dragged or burned out of their hides and killed.

Yes it is sometimes necessary to cull a population (due mostly to loss of habitat, which is our fault), but most hunters show a certain amount of respect when they shoot a deer. Many hunters I know will even quietly thank the deer for the life it has given. They don't indiscriminately shoot all deer they come across (like these rattlesnake round up folks do), they won't kill pregnant deer or fawns. They don't go around setting off bombs to see how many they can kill in a day, or burning up a forest to drive the deer out, they don't create a festival around it, which is essential what these round-ups do. The snake round up has the same ignorant, backwards mentality as the old Bison round-ups, wolf kills, and Passenger Pigeon shoot-outs.

We can't claim to be good stewards of the Earth if we don't show respect and understanding to all of God's creatures, and that includes using higher thinking skills to discriminate between asinine outdated festivals and land/resource management.

I live in the Southwest and have come across a few rattlers in my time. I leave them alone! I work at one hospice unit that is close to the edge of the desert and about twice a year we have to call a rattlesnake removal company to come and get the snake. We've seen some very very large ones! They are professionally and humanely removed and driven further out into the desert and released. That's the way it should be.