Humane

I was in the pet store today buying food for my snakes. I didn't set out to own snakes as pets, it was my daughter's idea. At the time she was still talking about being a veterinarian, so I obliged her whims on pets. That's how we got the geckos, spiders, mice, snakes, and rats. The mice didn't last, weren't big enough as food for the snakes and too big for the spiders. The rats we had to get rid of because I travel too much and they require constant care and maintenance.

The snakes, spiders, and geckos are very low maintenance and really are good pets for apartment dwellers like myself. For the geckos and spiders, I throw in crickets every few days, fresh water and regularly clean the tanks. The snakes eat one rat about every 6 to 10 days. None of the pets I have bark, chew on shoes, scratch up furniture, dig up the garden, or pee on the carpet.

So, back at the pet store, the woman in checkout behind me asked why I was buying rats.

"Do you have a snake or something?"

"Yeah, we have four Ball Pythons," I replied. "But one of them we're just watching."

The woman looked concerned at the four rats in the cage, "Do you do anything before giving them to the snakes?"

"No, I just drop them in the tank and the snake does the rest."

"Eww," she says. "I bet if you go online you can find a more humane way to do it."

The cashier says, "I don't think they'll eat anything other than rats or mice."

"They have pre-killed frozen rats," I say. "But then you have to thaw them, make sure they're room temp before you can feed them."

"No," says the woman, "I mean for dealing with those rats. You could break their neck or something so it's not as traumatic for them."

I just nodded. I'm feeding them to snakes - their natural predators. It’s the circle of life. Nature doing what nature does. But I couldn't help but think what a funny word "humane" was. I think its root is "human - of or pertaining to people." I know "humane" has to deal more with compassion and the proper treatment of people and animals. It's a philosophy to not allow things to suffer needlessly.

Dictionary.com says: "characterized by tenderness, compassion, and sympathy for people and animals, especially for the suffering or distressed."

But I'm not sure that "humane" should trump "nature." I've never heard anyone advocate that we run about and put wild mice and rats to death humanely before feeding them to wild snakes. Or birds of prey, or feral cats, lynx, raccoons, and any other predator that feeds on rats and mice. That would be absurd and impossible.

It's interesting how much people try to put human qualities on animals. Oh, I definitely feel that there shouldn't be any needless suffering. Animals - and people too - shouldn't be made to suffer for the sake of extending life.

We put our condemned prisoners to death in any variety of ways. We hung them, shot them, guillotined them, shocked them, and now we poison them. Honestly, I have to say that I think the Guillotine was probably the fastest method, and so by definition the most humane. But it was terribly gruesome.

Yet, for someone with terminal cancer or AIDS we'll force them into an extended and painful end game for… well, I'm not exactly sure why we do that. They're going to die. It's going to be painful. They don't want to go through it, but we make them. What happened to "humane"? Worse, we pump them full of drugs and chemicals to extend their pain - make it last and drag out the process. Sounds "anti-humane" to me.

I know this has become a political movement and encompasses capital punishment, euthanasia, and abortion. One side is claiming to be "pro-life" - but only for abortion; the other claiming "pro-choice" but only for birthing. They take opposite sides on capital punishment where the Pro-Life camp wants to kill all prisoners and the "Choice" side thinks a lifetime in a cage is enough. Surprisingly, they flip again on euthanasia where the Pro-Life camps says, "keep them alive - extend their suffering" and the Pro-Choice camps says, "Let 'em die." 

I've tried to sound non-partisan but I think it's obvious that I lean Democratic. Although I agree with capital punishment. But that's a blog for another day. Right now, I have some snakes to feed. I'll let nature decide who lives, who dies.