Wednesday, March 12, 2008

The Case for "Vermin" (Torture)

T2024, The Dead of the Rat, 2007, 8 seconds.



Anyone can go to their local hardware or a general store and buy a "clever" device to torture and to kill an animal called "vermin" who in her ability to feel pain and to suffer is no different than their dog, cat or their child, whose only fault is that she or he reproduces successfully and needs food, water and warmth.

Glue Traps are worse than poison. Not only do they kill indiscriminately, but they suffocate, blind, rip off body parts of the animals as they try to free themselves from the glue, which is impossible for them to do. It's like being stuck in the quick sand. The more you struggle, the more you get embedded into the glue. Try sticking one of them to your own face, mouth and your eyes.

Residential killing, torturing and then killing, catching in non lethal traps and then misplacing, which humans do in their homes, is only the tip of the iceberg. There are billions more of these animal persons being killed and tortured by poison, suffocation, starvation and dehydration, in glue traps and other industrial devices, in the cities and plantations, in public and private commercial buildings where food is produced, stored and handled, in parks, schools, churches, hotels and restaurants. This is done by paid to torture your friendly professional exterminators every second of every day everywhere.

At the same time, the reaction to this mass torture from the public and even from the majority of "animal rights crowd" is one of indifference, laziness and complacency. Killing is inexcusable but torture is evil. If cats and dogs were tortured in this way on this scale there would be an uprising. When seals are getting clubbed to death, great apes being experimented on, or puppies abandoned on the streets, there is a public outcry and rightfully so, but where is the outrage when mice and rats are being poisoned and tortured slowly to death every day and every hour, five feet from your cushy office chairs or around the corner in the kitchen of a restaurant as you are feasting on the body parts of chickens or cows, enslaved and then killed for your appetites?

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A 1983 test that evaluated the effectiveness of glue traps found that trapped mice struggling to free themselves would pull out their own hair, exposing bare, raw areas of skin. The mice broke or even bit off their own legs, and the glue caused their eyes to become badly irritated and scarred. After three to five hours in the glue traps, the mice defecated and urinated heavily because of their severe stress and fear, and quickly became covered with their own excrement. Animals whose faces become stuck in the glue slowly suffocate, and all trapped animals are subject to starvation and dehydration. It takes anywhere from three to five days for the mouse to finally die. This is nothing less than torture.

It is important to remember that though small and removed from our day-to-day world, mice and other small animals are mammals, with nervous systems and perceptions of pain that are similar to humans. There is no evidence that mice suffer any less than we do. Link

If you find a mouse caught in a glue trap, you can save his or her life. Simply put some cooking vegetable oil such as sesame oil onto the places where the mouse is stuck and gently work it into the glue with a Q-tip. Pour some more oil all over the glue board and around the mouse and let the animal work her or his way out of the glue into a dark and safe place such as a mailing tube with the opposite end closed.

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