Save Wonderful Nature and Animal : New York : World Traditional Killing Festival Squirrel slam Contest

7.31.2015

New York : World Traditional Killing Festival Squirrel slam Contest

Killing Squirrel Contest in New York

HOLLEY FIRE DEPT. home page http://holleyfire.com/index.html

Squirrel slam

“No one outside this tiny, rural village of 1,800 people had ever paid much attention to the Holley Fire Department’s annual Hazzard County Squirrel Slam fundraiser before now,” wrote Rochester Democrat & Chronicle reporter David Andreatta, covering protests led by Animal Advocates of Western New York, Animal Allies of Western New York, and Friends of Animals. This year, however, the seventh year of the Squirrel Slam, Andreatta noted that “at least 40,000 people signed various online petitions” against it, and about 100 demonstrators picketed the firehouse.

Squirrel Slam participants bought tickets, shot up to five squirrels each, and brought them back to the firehouse to be skinned and served at a community dinner. “Normally 200 [Squirrel Slam] tickets are sold each year. This year, 1,000 were sold,” reported Christina Noce of YNN-Rochester.

http://www.greanvillepost.com/2013/03/19/complex-world-how-to-protest-against-killing-contests-without-promoting-them-vexes-animal-defenders/

For no apparent reason, the town has, for the last six years, held an annual fund raising event sponsored by the local fire department, in which local residents--adults and children--compete to kill as many squirrels as possible. The seventh annual "Hazzard County Squirrel Slam" will offer cash prizes up to $200, in adult and youth categories, to those who kill the most and the largest squirrels on February 16. There is also a drawing to give away several guns, including an AR-15 assault rifle. Scores of squirrels will be killed, not for food, but simply for "entertainment." Many more will be injured, maimed, and left to die slowly and in pain. http://newsforsquirrels.blogspot.com/2013_01_01_archive.html

It's hard to imagine what could be so different about these two towns, what could make one town seek to embrace, protect, and celebrate its squirrel population, while the other takes pleasure in causing pain, suffering, and death among its squirrels. On the surface they both seem like mainstream, working-class American towns the likes of which can be found throughout the United States. I suppose if we look deep enough we could uncover some demographic, economic, and social differences that would explain this vast gulf between the attitudes and outlooks of these communities.

I say that if I had to decide which of these communities to settle in, the decision to me would be clear: the town that embraces life or the one that embraces death; compassion or suffering; comfort or pain; light or darkness.