I recently learned about something so cruel and disgusting that it's hard to believe it is allowed to continue. I originally posted this journal entry on November 23; I clicked the "edit" button just so it would appear in my watchers' messages again, since I've taken the lack of responses to mean that people either haven't read it or just don't care.

In Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Alabama, and Georgia, there are annual events called rattlesnake roundups. Wild rattlesnakes are forced from their dens, captured, and publicly tortured and killed. In front of cheering crowds, people skin them, decapitate them, and pull out their organs, to name just a few practices. Furthermore, in between the capture and the deliberate torture, the snakes are kept in cramped and unhygienic conditions without food or water; it's not uncommon for them to die of starvation, dehydration, or crushing.

I understand that a lot of people are afraid of snakes, but to derive pleasure from torturing and killing them is absolutely barbaric. You don't have to love snakes, or even like them, to realize that rattlesnake roundups are unacceptably cruel.

I have signed this petition calling for a ban on rattlesnake roundups, and I urge you to do the same. [link]