Python Eats Cat: new law proposed

The snake wasn't loose, the cat was.

I doubt pythons are native to Britain.....I think they were BOTH loose.

My point was that the python was confined to its property while the cat wasn't. So I don't get how it's being described as being "loose" and their native habitat isn't making that any clearer.

Well, I think you will find that it is an expectation that such things as exotic snakes are kept confined......(here, native ones, if one gets a permit to keep them, are also expected to be caged)

I don't think the garden is where any wildlife authority is going to be happy to find a pet exotic....


Also, yes, on this occasion the snake was in its backyard.....so poor old Wilbur was fair game, but why would you assume a loose snake is going to stay in ANY backyard?


There is no reason I can see why it might not have ended up in the next backyard eating, say, someone's Maltese, out having his righteously cribb'd, cabined and confined morning crap, in his very own garden? Or another neighbour's chooks etc? A python big enough to eat a cat is a reasonable size.

Also, I looked at the article, and, as the owner of cats who don't get to stray the neighbourhood, I do get the point....but I found the stuff about Wilbur the murderer of native wildlife vs the good snake silly, because said snake would also have been out attempting to murder said dear little voles etc., albeit less of them as snakes are cold blooded and don't have the same energy needs.

This is completely beside the point, but simply as an observer of cats who killed a number of highly dangerous young brown snakes in our back yard (yes, they're native, but to be honest we really didn't want them there because of how deadly they are) without a scratch, I suspect poor old Wilbur was a very poor Nimrod.

For whatever it's worth -- and I know it ain't much -- I'm totally in the cat's corner in this bout. Ain't nuttin' funny about a nasty old boa being loose in someone's backyard and killing a neighborhood cat.

But they are fine with the expectation that the cats would be out and about with cars. Letting their pet roam the neighborhood carries the inherent risk of it being hurt. Instead of trying to get others to secure their animals in their own property they should start with securing their own (or at least accepting their responsibility for the consequences).



I'd rate it more likely than a cat, but it depends on the backyard. But that is a bit like asking "well he wasn't the murderer this time, but what if he was?" and if the snake had escaped from his yard and killed the cat on the cat owner's property I'd support fully support legal action against the snake owner. It just happens not to be the case here.



Yeah and the cat could have killed a neighbors rabbit too but I don't get how making up hypothetical situations change what actually did happen. I support requiring python owners to reasonably secure their pets but I don't see how that factors into this case.

If someone else's animal broke into my property and killed my pet I would consider them liable for my loss. If my pet wandered into someone else's yard and was killed by their pet I would feel horrible but the liability shouldn't lie with them as long as their animal is securely kept in their own property.



The guy doesn't seem to like cats, which I didn't think was very relevant. But what resonates with me is that this is emotional litigation based on fear of snakes. If it had been a pair of Rottweilers (or any medium to large sized dogs) they could have killed the cat as well. The bottom line is that giving the cat the freedom of roaming the neighborhood comes at the trade off that it might meet its fate under a car or superior predator and I don't think that cat owners' rights to let their cats enter the property of others supersede the snake owners' rights to keep their snakes in their back yards (again, as long as they are securely kept within their property).

If it was just dogs, or even a human driver that killed the cat nobody would be discussing this. But because it's a snake the death is more exotic. I don't buy into this. If there are other good reasons not to allow for keeping a python in a back yard that's fine, but this story is just an emotional appeal of cats vs snakes. If it was just another traditionally acceptable pet this would be a non-issue.

I honestly do not know how to make it any clearer that I "get" the argument....it's a really simple one. The whole non-traditonal pet, might have been rotweilers, cars, snake in own yard, cats wandering unchecked seen as ok, etc.

I just wanted to have some fun with this one...you know, a bit of badinage, silly argument....that stuff.

I'll see if anyone else wants that, rather than the death by a thousand point by point thing.

That's fine, but not what I was intending, or want....and anyhow I get it. Really I do.

It's a bit like: "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" next door, eh?

I have to say I understand the cat owner's distress, even when it's kind of irrational, given the eternal verities and oh, the horror, and nature red in tooth and claw and all that.

Usually, death for we suburbanites is kind of at a remove....or on film.

I would have (knowing it was wrong) have been tempted to have cut the snake's stomach open and rescue Puddy....although it was likely kinder to leave the poor thing to die asap. And two predators meeting in the lists and one surviving is par for the course.

Thing is, most of we humans love the pettable mammals above the reptiles.

I, personally, have a horror of being eaten alive, and knowing that mammals are quite happy to do this if the prey is safely pinned down, or, especially in the case of dog packs, that they are happy to eat the dangling entrails while the prey is still running (they having a pack killing thing where the prey is attacked from below and slowly and tortously killed, while big cats, fearing harm from their prey, usually suffocate quickly) was a hell of a shock!

Really, in the natural world, endorphins and all, death often sucks.

I follow the mob...I tend, to root for my fellow mammals. I KNOW cats and orcas and dogs and such often kill horribly, and play horribly with their prey...but they are MY people.

But....I have no irrational horror for reptiles. I have nursed snakes, lizards etc back to health and released them.

But in the world of animal human relationships, we are very emotional and kind of irrational.

I think the silly cat-hating article was no help at all...while kind of funny.

I could have mounted a much better defence of the snake myself.


But....deep inside...THAT BASTARD KILLED WILBUR!!!!!!


It would have been awful to think of one's beloved Wilbur still alive and suffering in the monster's maw.


As for the insect world.....aaaaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhhhhh.

Huh? You ask me questions and when I answer them you call them death by a thousand points? I'll have to remember not to answer your questions in the future.

This is so subjective.
I'm glad the blameless and probably handsome snake found a nourishing meal, without leaving the comfort of home, and probably did not need to eat again for a week.

I pal around with snakes (pythons n anacondas whom I have met at conventions)
as much as the next guy, n I don 't consider myself a snob,
but I think that snakes r stupid; little above inanimate machines.

Admittedly, that is a racist opinion.
I am not P.C.





David

To be serious for a moment.....aren't there ALREADY restrictive laws in Britain about keeping wildlife?

In Oz, you have to pass through lots of hoops to get a permit to keep any native animal, and show that you have the knowledge to do so, because the belief is that they ought to be out there being wild and pro-creating and all that.

As a country that has made probably the worst mistakes in human history re importing exotics: noteably the rabbit, the cat, the fox, carp, the bloody cane-toad, camels, goats, buffalo, and, increasingly the dog (feral dogs now present a major problem for sheep and, presumably, wildlife in some areas....presumably replacing the dingo in that niche)...not to mention the awful damage that sheep and cattle have done with over-grazing ..and don't START me on plants....we have very strict restrictions on importing new species....and, even if you could get an exotic species of, say, snake, in to keep as a domestic pet, (which I doubt) you'd be in serious trouble if it was found loose in the garden (beacuse of concerns it might get out and start breeding with other escaped Wilbur eaters.)


In Britain can you just keep native animals as pets willy nilly?

How much more restrictive is "Wilbur's Law" than the law that was already in place re exotics, do you know?

I also find myself wondering how long it takes an animal (or human) to be somewhere before they are considered "native"?

Clearly longer than 200 years.....what about a thousand? Ten thousand?

In Oz, because our ecology had been so isolated for so long, our critters were sitting ducks for the exotics. Evidence appears to be increasing that, when they arrived about 50,000 years ago, Aboriginal people and the dingoes they appear to have brought with them wiped out our megafauna (this is still highly contentious, and not something aboriginal people want to hear about...but the last bit of information about research I heard about it was supportive of human intervention rather than climate change doing it...though that may change and is certainly not established)...so it looks like our ecology kind of stabilised, as much as it ever does, about 49,00 years ago.

Cats, foxes, rabbits etc are still having a measurable effect on species..as is ongoing loss of habitat.

I am wondering, though, if cats are still actually a danger to SPECIES in Britain?

They are, of course, to individual animals......but I had kind of wondered if they might have been in the UK long enough for a balance to be arrived at?

I mean, you guys had wild cats.....always now referred to as rare and shy etc....but might it be that the domestic cats filled their niche, from back when their population hadn't been decimated by humans and what we bring with us? Do you know if domestic cats in the UK are endangering SPECIES, still? I mean, the article mentioned the endangered vole etc, and I am sure cats would love to kill a tasty vole...but is it the cats, or habitat loss/pollution etc that are threatening these creatures?

This is quite separate from whether Wilbur had any right to be wandering in others' backyards, of course.

I think in a few years that confining cats to their owners' properties will be as accepted a norm as keeping dogs confined is now. Only it's harder to do!

The dog thing is relatively new, at least here.

When I was a kid, it was considered perfectly acceptable that dogs were not fenced in. The walk to school was rather fraught as one knew each house that had a dog that would come out and chase you. Most were harmless, but I was quite seriously bitten by a dog which had already bitten 3 other children, and its owners still had their yard gates open and, although we made sure we were on the other side of the street when we passed that house, it was scary doing so, as we never knew when the dog would come at us.

(The dog was supposed to be killed if it bit anyone after the third kid, but my parents and I didn't want to report it......imagine allowing a dog that had bitten four kids these days!)

It was certainly not expected that you would walk your dog on a leash and such.

Dogs can still be a major nuisance with barking...but one is no longer generally beset by dogs on walks. Though there was one dog whose house I used to walk past a lot (but I kept forgetting which house it was) whose joy in life was to creep down the side of the high stone fence, of which a hapless human was walking on the other side ...and lie in wait for you at the bit of the fence that had crumbled at the top, and was replaced by chook wire. Just as your head was closest to this bit of wire, the dog (which was a large German Shepherd, as I recall) would leap up and bark and snarl at you...its choppers only inches away. Got me every time....you could almost hear it laughing as it made its way back to wait for its next prey.


The anti-cat movement in Australia has been active for about 20 years, or more, and moves to control cats are getting gradually stronger...some people here think they just shouldn't be allowed to exist....most want perfectly reasonable restrictions. Lots of owners now allow only brief periods outside, or have runs for the cats in their yards, or keep them inside. Of course, there are still heaps of people who do not control their cats at all...including not de-sexing....but I think there will soon be laws to punish such owners.

I am wondering how far along the UK is on this?

I didn't ask you any questions at all....I attempted to have a fun discussion...as some might have guessed by my tone....this whole topic, while kind of awful, is also rather Pythonesque.

Perhaps it would help if I used emoticons to denote a discussion where I am playing?

To be fair, I was making some serious points, (eg exotic pets being fully secured) but it was kind of irritating to find a lengthy serious argument apparently presupposing I hadn't got a truly simple point.

I imagine a cat would keep a python going for at least a month, if not longer. Mind you, there's more fur than anything on the average cat. I hope the python gets a furball!

Unless it's big enough to be a threat to humans!

We have had a couple of loving python owners killed by their pets over the last few years.

Not sure if they escaped (snakes are good escapologists if they get a break) or if they were allowed to roam the house at will.

Snakes do not make good citizens, as a general rule.

I am particularly prejudiced against venomous snakes.
I admit that I don 't like them.
I don' t associate with them -- not in any way.





David

On the other hand,
I can be open minded enuf to consider keeping one as a police snake,
to patrol and defend your premises from burglars, if u coud train him enuf that u can rely upon his loyalty.

David...you have to be making a funny, no?

I like snakes...especially pythons....and I think they make very good citizens of their ecological niche.

That being said, I am very respectful of venemous snakes, and would certainly not attempt to associate with them in any way they were not perfectly happy with!

I would also rather not be bitten by one, and I would be very upset if one ate my cat!

Lots of pets here are killed by snakes, not just cats.


Big brown snakes (which are very venomous...young ones are even more so) actually CAN look like big sticks!

As a kid, I actually picked a huge one up to move it....I was leading horses in to be saddled, way out bush, and imagined one might step on this big branch and spook itself, or trip.

Oddly, I didn't question what an entirely new branch was doing there.

Luckily, I picked up the middle bit, not near the head, as I think it was likely annoyed by having someone attempt to throw it away.

The snake, the horses, and I all froze as the snake moved in my hand.

I let go, and we all ran off in different directions, all terrified.

I never believed that stick thing before.

David wrote:




dlowan wrote:

I am making a funny, yes; some humor at the expense of the herpetol race.





dlowan wrote:

I dunno if u coud convince the field mice of that.
I have a picture of a 120 pound python on my shoulders,
at a convention outside of Washington, in Virginia;
(weight quoted to me by his owner).
We were not allowed to take the snakes up in the hot air balloons.





dlowan wrote:

Joking aside,
I was taken aback to see on TV the results of a snakebite
(a rattlesnake, if I recall accurately) on an unhappy citizen,
whose arm turned black, as it was (very painfully) digested
by the venom, from the inside out. The victim was rescued
in a hospital. I think that the victim was a herpetologist who was bitten anyway.
He described the pain as like putting your arm into a furnace
that keeps getting hotter and hurting worse as the time passes.




dlowan wrote:

I woud too; over the course of my life,
I 've had some cats n kittens.
Tho I agree with u,
I must admit that the cat woud and will eat
any animal that he sees fit; i.e., if the tables were turned,
he 'd eat the snake, if he wanted to, if he were able to.
In that vein, I saw some underwater photography wherein
a big mouth bass ate a baby alligator, whole, in one bite.
I was very surprized at that. We know that alligators have eaten many fish.
There is also a picture on the Internet of a snake in Florida who ate an adult alligator who was too big,
and the snake exploded.

Someone came upon the results in the Everglades and took a picture.






dlowan wrote:
Yeah, that is dangerous to humans also,
who discover the snake after its too late.
I grew up in Arizona. That problem has been experienced there.




dlowan wrote:
My goodness! That certainly is alarming.
It is to your credit that after that, u still are emotionally able
to like pythons, who fortunately are not venomous.
(I must admit that, when I had that 120 pound fellow on my shoulders,
I thought he had a certain charm to him.)

Many decades ago, when I was 9, a friend of mine convinced me,
against my better judgement, to go hunting rattlesnakes
out on the desert. Neither of us had the presence of mind
to bring a shotgun. We had revolvers and he had a rifle;
not the best choice of weapons for the task. We were stupid.
I am glad that we found no snakes, or any other animals.


Permit me to add that in the 1980s, I visited Austrailia,
staying in your opulent Hyatt Regency Hotel in Melbourne.
I saw the sights, including its zoo, and had a wonderful time.
I came away with the highest opinion of the Austrailians.

I enjoyed your practice of setting forth menu prices in round numbers
instead of something like "$24.99" for the main course.
That 's a good and forthright thing to do; I approve of that.

If I remember accurately, I was not charged sales tax.
(I am very accostomed to paying sales tax in restaurants.)





David

I would think that NOT being bitten by a highly venomous snake, which was clearly peacefully asleep and minding its own business, when rudely attacked by a human, would decrease one's fear of snakes, rather than increase it!!!


All predators are horrid from the point of the view of the prey...and being presented with rats and mice by one of my cats, who killed a great many of them, was awful from my point of view...but likely helpful from the point of view of the ecology and my neighbours.

I had one cat who used to place the odd mouse, quite unharmed, in my ear at 3.00 am and wait to be congratulated.

I had a shoebox in my chest of drawers, with soft nesting, and I used to put the mice in there while they were still frozen in fear, let them settle during the night, and release them again some distance away in the morning.


I have more fear of spiders, having had two serious infections from their bites....but they do what they do, and it is ridiculous to bear wild animals ill will for their normal behaviour. I just don't want them in my home!

You even went so far as to insert my dog breed in the questions you asked me to personalize the example, I don't know why you are now claiming you didn't even ask me any questions. At most you could claim they were all rhetorical and you didn't really want an answer but you did ask me direct questions.



Whether or not you "get" it you seemed to be disagreeing with it, and asked me directly about the expectation that snakes should be caged (my response is that if they are secure in their owners property the cat owners have no right to such an expectation) as well as the assumption that the snake would be secure in the back yard (I don't know if it was, but that isn't hugely relevant to this case).

You can call it all a bit of fun that I am responding to too seriously (I don't buy that entirely, I think you disagreed with my position), and even pretend that you didn't ask me any questions at all if you want but either way the end result is the same, and makes spending time on the responses seem wasted.