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RE: How anti-snake legislation gets proposed
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by MoccasinMan on November 29, 2006
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That would require a proactive approach that would deal with reptiles outside the reactionary AR type legislation. Otherwise the API and HSUS drag every exotic animal into the debate in the wake of a high profile accident.
Andrew
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RE: How anti-snake legislation gets proposed
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by Cro on November 29, 2006
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Exactly.
When some nut-case with a pet tiger lets it eat someone, we get dragged in by the AR folks and lumped under the dangerous animal label.
The folks who keep tigers,lions, wolves, and bears are few and far between. They are on a sinking ship. Do we want to get dragged down because of an association with them? How much support do they give to us?
We, on the other hand, are, or could be, part of a much larger hobby base, (the non-venomous reptile / amphibian / petshop hobby base).
Also, there are other exotic animal bases that are tied with relatively harmless animals, such as Alpacas, Llamas, Pot-Bellied Pigs, and tropical fish.
And lets not forget the dog / cat / hamster folks who support the pet shop industry. We need the support of these people if possible.
And of course, we need the support of folks who like to keep hunting dogs, and I believe that NCARK has the support of these folks.
I am just throwing out some ideas about who we should associate ourselves with, to see what others think on the topic.
Best Regards JohnZ
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RE: How anti-snake legislation gets proposed
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by MoccasinMan on November 29, 2006
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In agricultural states livestock farmers are extremely powerful lobby's. Especially hog and poultry farmers. They have no love for snakes... but they will live with them to keep the AR movement out of their state.
Andrew
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RE: How anti-snake legislation gets proposed
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by MoccasinMan on November 29, 2006
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Also, like you said John, it is very important to ally ourselves with the non-venomous people. They love snakes and there is far more of them. We estimate that there are upwards of 400,000 homes in NC that have some type of reptile.
Andrew
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RE: How anti-snake legislation gets proposed
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by LarryDFishel on November 29, 2006
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Sorry guys, but I think you're playing right into their hands here. I think we need as many allies as we can get, and other exotic keepers are as close as we get. All the ones I know are on our side (even if not actively), but that could change if we start talking this way.
HSUS would love nothing more than to divide us into little warring factions that they can take down one at a time.
With the exception of possibly a few well publicized incedents with big cats, most of the horror stories you hear about other exotics are illegal keepers just like the recent venomous case in Indiana, and we all just got through moaning about how that had nothing to do with us legal kepers, right...
P.S. Cro, as a wolf lover (and part time handler, but not keeper yet), I'd like to hear any cases you know of people being killed by pet wolves. I know of exactly one case of a woman killed by her 9(!) wolf-dog hybrids. I know the story's been repeated enough times it sounds like 10 incidents though...
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RE: How anti-snake legislation gets proposed
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by Cro on November 29, 2006
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Larry, I agree that we need as many allies as we can find. I do wonder some though about the big cat folks.
I have no problem with someone who knows what they are doing keeping wolves, as I like wolves also. But, there must be someway to make sure responsible folks are keeping them. If someone buys a wolf/dog cross or pure wolf, it is all too often because the person thought it would be cool, without knowing anything about the animals. Sort of like folks buying venomous reptiles. They should know the care and responsibility in keeping an animal before they buy it. It is like at the last Columbia Reptile Show, where someone was selling Desert Lynx kittens. Boy, they were cute, but most of the folks who would take them home would have had no business keeping an animal like that.
It is also kind of like the pit-bull / rotwiler / chow / doverman thing. A lot of the attacks on little kids seem to be because the folks keeping these aggressive dogs were keeping them for the wrong reason, (cool factor), or to portray themselves as bad dudes, and let the dogs get out and roam the neighborhood or jump a fense. Now, before you label me as a dog hater, I am not that at all, as one of my friends had a pit-bull that he raised from a puppy, and it was the nicest and most protective dog to him and me, but, it nearly killed his little sister.
I have known very freindly Chows, Dovermans, German Shepherds, and Chows, but have also ran into some truely wicked ones.
But getting back to the big cat thing. There are only a handfull of keepers of them in the country. And we are allied with them under the exotic animal thing. In my opinion, a lot of these folks really should not be keeping big cats. There was this neighbor I used to live near who would walk his african lion on a small leash down the road every evening. He seemed to like the attention. If that lion had decided to do something unexpected like attack a dog or child, the man would have not be able to do anything to stop it.
There was also an excaped cougar that had once been someones pet which ate a lot of cats and dogs in folks backyards in Dekalb County for several years.
I just think that we should draw the line at big cat keepers. The hand full of them will not give us much support, and most of them come off as nut-cases or showmen, and use their animals in situations that are just accidents waiting to happen. If you take a 600 LB tiger, and treat it like a house cat, and pose it for photos with kids, eventually, a kid is going to be hurt by it, just as folks get bit / scratched by tame house cats on a bad day. But the consequences of a big cat biting / scratching are going to kill someone. And then the news papers will have a field day about exotic animals and drag reptile keepers in again.
I guess I just dont trust most folks enough to want them to keep big cats like tigers and lions and cougars in captivity. If my neighbors had a big cat like that, I would always be armed with a large caliber firearm when I work in my yard, in case it got out and caused problems on my property. My neighbors cant even manage to keep their dogs, cats, and goats in their yards, so I have no faith in them keeping a big cat contained in a proper cage. And I do not trust big cats enough to ever think they should be used as stage props by photograpers who want to pose kids with them for a photo shoot.
Best Regards JohnZ
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RE: How anti-snake legislation gets proposed
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by LarryDFishel on November 29, 2006
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Don't take this the wrong way Cro, but these posts sound exactly like the arguments that are used against us.
At least think about looking into the numbers, because I think you're way underestimating them. I have a list of exotic permit holders in Florida from 2004. It seems to be incomplete, and I don't know what is missing or why, so my interpolation may be off, but the list I have has roughly twice as many people with either Class I or Class II felidae permits as with venomous reptile permits. The list doesn't specify what they keep, so there could be 5 tigers and 700 cervils for all I know, but I doubt it.
The caging requirement here are very strict and I would not hesitate to move into the house next to someone who owned a tiger unless I had some reason to believe they were not following the regs (and they wouldn't last long if they weren't).
It's not "a handful of people", and keeping them legally in most places is very expensive. Guess what that means... Most legal keepers a few bucks to spend on defending their hobbies. Not the people we should be discounting, I think...
Walking your lion down the street is illegal here as I bet it is almost anywhere.
I can't really argue with your point on having big cats around the public, at least after they reach a certain size. And if you want to argue that any state that does not require permits and secure caging should, I can understand that, but to say you don't think people should have them because they scare you sounds strangely familiar to me.
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RE: How anti-snake legislation gets proposed
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by kacz on November 29, 2006
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I have to agree that we need all the allies that we can get. This is particularly true because we may be the low man on the totem pole. We can spend hours on conjecture about the keepers and keeping of lions and tigers and bears (Oh my!). But, as we all know, future legislation will have less to do with fact than with perception. The four-legged beasts (even the wolves) have one thing that our charges don’t – the fuzzy factor. They are hairy mammals and as such engender a certain sympatric endearment. Ask the man on the street what they think of these animals and they are more likely to respond “awesome”. Ask the same person what they think of venomous snakes and they are more likely to respond “fearsome”. I wouldn’t be surprised if a higher percentage of them think that we’re nut cases, than we do of them. If the preponderance of media reports is about snakes it will be advantageous for them to distance themselves from us. They may even gain benefit by pointing to us as sacrificial lambs.
In fighting the AR agenda we, as venomous snake keepers, may have to suppress some of our own personal ideals in order to build a united front. I’m not talking about our disdain of the individual nut cases that can be found in any discipline, the ones that do harm to themselves and everyone around them. I’m talking about our own general biases and opinions. If the battle starts raging we may even find ourselves allied with the proponents of………..dare I say it?..............venomoids!
Paul M. Kaczmarczik
P.S. I personally do not condone venomoids in any way shape or form. But, if our ability to keep our snakes is contingent on our tolerance of them, and other interests for which I have little affinity, then I am willing to look the other way.
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RE: How anti-snake legislation gets proposed
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by Cro on November 30, 2006
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Larry, it is the cat owners that scare me, not the big cats themselves. I have seen some bad examples of how irresponsible folks were keeping big cats, and know of cases of big cats excaping.
It is good to know that Florida has strict housing and care laws for these animals. And it is surprising to find out so many folks own big cats there. But if they are in that large of numbers, and have a good track record, then their support could be useful to us, and I would welcome it in that case.
We will have to hope that other states writing dangerous wildlife laws will use Florida as an example of how to do things right.
Best Regards JohnZ
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RE: How anti-snake legislation gets proposed
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by Cro on December 1, 2006
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I asked a question here about the folks who keep big cats as pets.
Thanks to the replies here, and several private eMails I have recieved, I have now found out that the people who keep big cats are overall very responsible folks, are way more numerous than I ever imagined, and they are much more organized than the venomous reptile keepers are, as they have several top notch national organizations. There is a lot we can learn here from their national organizational structure.
It is very good to learn news like this, and to know that these folks are good allies for all exotic animal keepers.
I guess I was reading too much into some items in the news where accidents happened concerning big cats, and I am now sure the news reports were sensationalized, just as snake bite stories in the news are often sensationalized.
So to the big cat folks, I apologise if it seemed that I was attacking your group. My intent was just to learn more, and get others ideas and feedback on the subject. Thanks for being allies to other exotic animal keepers and venomous reptile keepers.
Best Regards JohnZ
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