“Few men could endure to watch for five minutes an animal struggling in a trap with a crushed and torn limb…I know of no sight more sorrowful than that of these unoffending animals [rabbits] as they are seen in the torture grip of these traps. They sit drawn up into a little heap, as if collecting all their force of endurance to support the agony; some sit in a half torpid state induced by intense suffering. Most young ones are found dead after some hours of it, but others as you approach, start up, struggle violently to escape, and shriek pitiably, from terror and the pangs occasioned by their struggles. We feel more compassion for a timid, harmless animal, such as a rabbit, than for vermin, but the actual agony must be the same in all cases. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the suffering thus endured from fear, from acute pain, maddened by thirst, and by vain attempts to escape…Some who reflect upon this subject for the first time will wonder how such cruelty can have been permitted to continue in this age of civilization; and no doubt if men of education saw with their own eyes what takes place under their sanction, the system would have been put an end to long ago.”
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Charles Darwin, Gardeners’ Chronicle and Agricultural Gazette, 1863
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Please see damage that leg-hold traps can inflict: http://www.trapfreenm.org/learn-more-multimedia-photos.php. The barbarity has not changed – trapping still maims, mutilates, kills and causes unimaginable pain and suffering, ended by a horrible death at the hands of the trapper. Isn’t it about time that this practice is stopped?
Coyote Coexistence 