FWC Kills Captive Pythons and Boa

Horrendous actions. Despicable behavior. Ignorance to ID species.

April 10, 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuimdwINSzk

https://www.usarkfl.net/news/1316230...%20constrictor.

Contacts:

Governor DeSantis
https://www.flgov.com/email-the-governor/

FWC
https://myfwc.com/contact/tell-us/

https://myfwc.com/contact/#:~:text=S...ip%40MyFWC.com.

https://myfwc.com/contact/fwc-office/

This just sickens me. Was the owner restrained? I would have had to have been in his shoes.

If someone can get me a list of the IP addresses used by FWCC, I will ban every one of them from this site.

If there are members here who work for FWCC that anyone knows of, they will be banned as well. If I found any of them on fire, I would not even piss on them to try to put out the flames.

I used to be very pro LEO, but not any longer.

Originally Posted by WebSlave

This just sickens me. Was the owner restrained? I would have had to have been in his shoes.

If someone can get me a list of the IP addresses used by FWCC, I will ban every one of them from this site.

If there are members here who work for FWCC that anyone knows of, they will be banned as well. If I found any of them on fire, I would not even piss on them to try to put out the flames.

I used to be very pro LEO, but not any longer.

It’s definitely time the line in the sand is drawn. I feel the same way and I’m full support of this

I think a compelling response by reptile keepers is to send Governor DeSantis an email - polite yet expressing disgust, disdain for the FWC, and the three FWC employees in particular. Calls are good, but less so than opinions memorialized which can be retrieved in the future. I suspect that the FWC, like all state game and fish commissions, will be resistant and not do much. It seems obvious a superior to the three instructed them to destroy the snakes. They came prepared with "tools of the euthanizing trade". The boa was poorly executed and may constitute animal cruelty. If so, these men acted outside of their job description and parameters and may be personally liable without FWC protection.

DeSantis has his eye on running for president. If enough communications are sent - he cannot ignore the issue. Internet searches indicate approximately 5 million households have one or more snakes. Additional millions have lizards, tortoises, turtles, amphibians, crocodilians. Affinity support may also be available. There are 750k ferret keepers, and over 7 million bird keepers. Untold number of exotic mammal keepers. And overall, it is likely that even people who dislike snakes will be horrified at the video. Most anyone with a love for animals including traditional domestic pets will be disturbed. Anecdotally I have been informed that many people are posting the video on FB, TicToc and other online venues. The more the better. However, without communications to the governor the actions of these FWC idiots will fade. "Tomorrow is always a new news day".

As this reply is being posted, YouTube indicates the video has been viewed 39,000 times. It appears this is about 1000 times per hour since first posted. While impressive, the views are a small percentage of reptile keepers; and a very small percentage when considering all other animal keepers. To get results - views must be followed by communication to the governor.

Originally Posted by WebSlave

I used to be very pro LEO, but not any longer.

The law enforcement system itself sure seems to be fraying at the seams. There are many fine people that work in law enforcement, though.

One of the most decent people I know is a state trooper, and my wife speaks highly of the officers she interacts with professionally. We went to the wedding of one of them not long ago, he's a local cop and she is military -- they didn't have a cake, but instead served wedding donuts. No lie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNhI4Uopio8

This makes me worried for any hobbyists who happen to keep any species of herp which might happen to be illegal to keep in their particular town. Many cities ban certain "dangerous" species. Many cities ban ALL species of reptile and amphibians. Of course, these laws are based on ignorance and fear, rather than fact or logic. But, many of us could face a similar situation at some point.

If you want to see something really scary, read the comments section in the various news articles about this event. Around 90% of them express sentiments such as "good riddance", "snakes should not be legal to keep as pets", "snake keepers have something wrong with them", and of course, the standard "only good snake is a dead snake".
That's how the general public feels about our hobby. One can only predict that the herp hobby will be mostly illegal, soon enough.

What concerns me even more is the blatant display of disrespect and empathy for living things that some members of law enforcement exhibit. The way people treat animals can usually be directly related to how they will treat other human beings as well. IMHO.

NBC News did a segment on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UklaC4iXKSQ

The comments section on that NBC video is pretty uplifting, at least as it stands right now. It would be interesting to see how the comments sections on various news outlets' stories differ (I did read those on the current Newsweek article, but Newsweek's audience is a bit hard to pinpoint so I'm not sure how to interpret).

I sometimes wonder if there's any patterns in people's thoughts about the right of others to own reptiles based on their political/social leanings. As far as I can tell there's no pattern at all, but that's likely due to the erratic shifting of the core beliefs of the political spectrum as it used to be conceived (like, in the 1980s when it sort of made sense).