Poboy kartman
Senior Moments Member
Thought I'd start another thread everyone can chime in on, because it's really just about opinions and how you view things.
A few years ago, I was fairly active on a snake forum. So...I've gotten into snakes...(a little)...even though I used to be deathly afraid of them, but most fears are due to ignorance, and once I educated myself on snakes...my paranoia subsided.
I have had over 20 different wild snakes of probably 10 different species since getting my wild Texas rat snake who is about 14 years old now.
So...I have two small ponds in my backyard....and sometimes they are visited by uninvited snakes. So, I mention that there are two snakes I kill on sight: blotched water snakes and yellow bellied water snakes. The blotched water snakes because they are just so hard to catch and they eat my fish. The yellow bellied because their primary diet is frogs and toads.
I get a pretty good hatch of toads in my ponds most years...and I absolutely LOVE baby toads...but that's not really it. Frogs and toads are in trouble. I know I have two different sub-species that breed in that pond, and I'm not expert enough to positively ID them, but I believe one of them is an endangered species.
But you would have thought I had assassinated Mother Teresa by the responses I got from these people.
To make a very long story a little shorter...one guy said I should let nature take it's course...So...what's your opinion? Can we just let "nature" take it's course?
BTW: There's a healthy population of yellow bellied and a booming population of blotched watersnakes in my area.
Anyway....this is not meant to be a discussion about this one paticular incident...but whether man should interfere with "nature" taking it's course and that natural selection should take care of itself. Feel free to present any animal or scenario you'd like.
A few years ago, I was fairly active on a snake forum. So...I've gotten into snakes...(a little)...even though I used to be deathly afraid of them, but most fears are due to ignorance, and once I educated myself on snakes...my paranoia subsided.
I have had over 20 different wild snakes of probably 10 different species since getting my wild Texas rat snake who is about 14 years old now.
So...I have two small ponds in my backyard....and sometimes they are visited by uninvited snakes. So, I mention that there are two snakes I kill on sight: blotched water snakes and yellow bellied water snakes. The blotched water snakes because they are just so hard to catch and they eat my fish. The yellow bellied because their primary diet is frogs and toads.
I get a pretty good hatch of toads in my ponds most years...and I absolutely LOVE baby toads...but that's not really it. Frogs and toads are in trouble. I know I have two different sub-species that breed in that pond, and I'm not expert enough to positively ID them, but I believe one of them is an endangered species.
But you would have thought I had assassinated Mother Teresa by the responses I got from these people.
To make a very long story a little shorter...one guy said I should let nature take it's course...So...what's your opinion? Can we just let "nature" take it's course?
BTW: There's a healthy population of yellow bellied and a booming population of blotched watersnakes in my area.
Anyway....this is not meant to be a discussion about this one paticular incident...but whether man should interfere with "nature" taking it's course and that natural selection should take care of itself. Feel free to present any animal or scenario you'd like.