Depressing

I've been unceremoniously chosen to feed the corn snake that belongs to my brother Matt (who's vacationing in Wisconsin). Which I find funny, because I have trouble even killing mosquitoes or ticks (my policy is you attack me, I attack you). I'm the biggest animal freak in the family—look how upset I get when Max runs away!—yet I get to do this distasteful task. Anyhow, the photo of the snake above is an actual photo of the snake eating yesterday, taken with my cell phone. Luckily Pete helped me handle the snake, but I had to do the defrosting and dispensing of the pinkie mouse.

Now, I don't have a problem with snakes (I used to have a garter snake years ago), but I DO have a problem with the poor pinkie mouse that I had to sacrifice to feed to it. I think it's totally fair if the snake and the mouse have an equal shot at getting what they want out of life (namely, the snake eating the mouse and the mouse avoiding this situation). But it's really depressing that these pinkie mice are born and killed just for this purpose. These poor things never even get the chance to live. Their entire existence is centered around the feeding of such creatures as this corn snake, who is innocent in all this and just needs to eat, like everyone else. For some reason the concept of breeding baby mice just to kill them, then freezing their little bodies, never allowing them to get a chance to live, just really depresses me.

(Pinkie mouse photo courtesy of Ohmystinkinheck.com)