Published on reptilesmagazine.com the 10.04.2023. | By: John Virata
Law enforcement officers of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) slaughtered 35 legally kept snakes on Holy Thursday.
Note: The cruel slaughter has already gone down in the history of US reptile husbandry as the “Holy Thursday Massacre”. It shows just how detrimental regulation of reptile keeping can be. The keeper had been forced by the FWC to keep the snakes in his care for over a year after a deadline set by the FWC passed and the snakes could not be rehomed. They were kept legally, as he had a conditional species permit from the FWC, and were housed at another keeper’s facility.
The officers spent four hours killing the snakes. The keeper, who was housing the other keeper’s 34 snakes, had a pregnant boa constrictor against which or against whose possession the authorities had nothing at all. She, too, died at the hands of the officers because they mistook her for another snake. Their alleged reason for appearing was the report of an escaped reticulated python. It is hardly comprehensible why snakes under human custody were then killed.
