Animal abuse *SHOCKING*

Choose horrible if you think this is not important and you don't think should be allowed.
Choose Awsome if you think this is funny and we shouldn't bother covering it.
Choose ok if you are in between.

Update: Serendipity is a funny thing. Just a few hours after I posted this, I noticed that the University of Georgia Law Student Animal Defense Fund Chapter is highlighting a campaign by the Center for Biological Diversity to make rattlesnake roundups illegal in Georgia. If you live in Georgia, please take a second to sign on to their effort, and even if you don't live in Georgia, they have a pretty solid sample letter that you can use to start the fight against rattlesnake roundups where you live.
By the time the audience gets settled down and the barrels are rolled out, most of the snakes couldn't attack if they wanted to. They're starved and weakened, dehydrated, half-suffocated. Sometimes, they're completely suffocated, because there isn't a lot of air when you're at the bottom of the tank, locked in and trapped under the bodies of dozens like you.
Welcome to a rattlesnake roundup, where you can get up close and personal with hundreds of rattlesnakes that have been gassed out of their burrows.

A woman in Georgia was arrested last week for forcing her 12-year-old son to kill his pet hamster with a hammer.
The boy was being punished for bad grades. He told his teacher about it the next day, who reported the incident to authorities.

Who was a likely repeat customer for some of the 27,000 neglected animals that were recently rescued from U.S. Global Exotics' Texas warehouse? The answer is no surprise: Petland.
On the hypocritically titled webpage Pet Welfare at Petland the company says they are "aware of the many animal welfare issues in the news today." That makes sense, considering many of the stories have to do with Petland.
As recently as June 2009, Humane Society investigators confirmed that the company continues to support puppy mills, despite class action lawsuits over selling unhealthy puppies in at least 20 states. Then there was the story last summer of Petland employees who killed two rabbits, who had injured themselves fighting in their cage, by drowning them in the sink ... and then took pictures of themselves with the dead animals.
Now there's the U.S. Global Exotics debacle. Petland's major competitors, Petco and PetSmart, were not customers of U.S. Global Exotics, although they do sell some live animals. Unlike the others, Petland is one of the few national chains that still sells puppies and, with this latest story, they've shown again and again that they make purchasing decisions that have nothing to do with the well-being of the animals. As far as Petland is concerned, animals are just products that can be bought cheaply, warehoused, and sold for a profit.

Across the U.S., millions of pigs and other animals too sick to stand (commonly referred to as "downed animals") suffer terribly at farms, stockyards and slaughterhouses. They are left for hours or days without receiving proper veterinary care, and they are often dragged with chains or pushed with forklifts. Farm Sanctuary has worked to document and end the abuses of downed animals since 1986, and we’re making progress. Last year, the Obama administration tightened up federal regulations to prevent downed cattle from being slaughtered and used for human food. But, this policy needs to be expanded and applied to pigs and other animals who continue to suffer unnecessarily.

In the largest raid in U.S. history, more than 27,000 animals were rescued in December from an exotic pet dealer in Texas. Earlier this month, the sloths, chinchillas, lemurs, hedgehogs, ferrets, snakes, lizards, spiders, and other assorted species officials removed had their day in court.
Municipal Judge Michael Smith decided that the 20,000+ surviving animals should not be returned to the dealer, U.S. Global Exotics.
The investigation that led to the raid was made possible largely due to an undercover agent working on behalf of PETA. The organization says that many of the animals were destined to be sold at major pet store chains, like PetSmart and Petco.