The Fur Trade

Reading about the fur industry makes me feel so sick and angry. I just read an article about a woman who was hiking in a national forest when her dog started pulling to investigate something off the path. It was a steel leg-hold trap - the scary bear-trap kind - camouflaged under some leaves. As she was approaching the trap, before she even realized what it was, the woman's steps accidentally tripped it, and the trap snapped shut - luckily without harming her or her dog. According to the article, it is legal for trappers to put traps like that on public property, where anyone could step on them. Her dog could have been maimed or killed; she could have stepped on the trap herself and been seriously injured.

I think it's awful that fur trappers are allowed to operate at all, let alone use those barbaric types of traps, let alone use them on public land.

Once my parents found a skunk that had been caught in a leg-hold trap. It was half-crazy with fear and pain, covered in blood and froth, and had been trapped so long it had worn a circle in the dirt where it had dragged itself and its shattered leg in the trap, around and around. My father drove three miles down the road until he found a farmhouse so he could borrow a shotgun (this was Texas and my parents were probably the only people in the state who didn't own a gun). Then he drove back and shot the skunk. My mother couldn't bear to look at the skunk or watch, she was horrified and crying. My parents describe the episode cautiously, biting off their words as though they can't bear to remember it, their pain at witnessing something so cruel still evident after many years.