What Were They Thinking?

Child safety is a priority for most parents. We are meticulous about putting our children in their car seats, making them wear helmets when they are biking or skateboarding, and we make sure they don't play unsupervised or in the street. Why then, would anyone who has a two-year-old child own a pet Burmese python? Recently, in Oxford, Florida, a python which was over 8 feet in length, broke out of it's terrarium. You can see the writing on the wall. Toddler Shaiunna Hare was already dead when paramedics arrived. The owner of the python, Shaiunna's mother's boyfriend, Charles Darnell, discovered the snake missing and went to search for it. It shouldn't be hard to find an 8+ foot python. It had made it's way to Shaiunna's room and Charles found it wrapped around Shaiunna, who had already been strangled. There were bite marks all over her head. It wouldn't have been long before the snake would have swallowed her. The snake was so tightly wrapped around the little girl that he had to stab it numerous times before he was able to pry it away from the child.

I'm sure Mr. Darnell was frantically trying to save Shaiunna, but what was he (and especially her mother) thinking? An 8 foot snake doesn't belong in any home, much less the home of a toddler. A child should be safe in her own home. Where are the restrictions for owning such pets? Why would anyone want to own a "pet" that has to be fed another pet (bunnies, mice, rats, etc.)?

People who have bought and kept Burmese pythons find that they get too big to keep at home. In Florida, an alarming number of them have been released into the everglades. There, they are thriving and breeding. Last week alone, 18 large pythons were removed from the everglades, where they are wreaking havoc with the native species. They eat all of the natural wildlife, including alligators. There are a number of endangered and protected species in the everglades who are losing the battle to the pythons. This year to date, 245 Burmese pythons have been caught in the everglades. You can watch a video made by National Geographic, which states that hunters are now being issued permits to hunt down and kill the pythons.

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/news/culture-places-news/florida-pythons-apvin.html

Hurricane Andrew contributed to the problem. People fleeing the hurricane left their pet pythons behind. In the aftermath of the hurricane, many of these snakes escaped their habitats when homes were destroyed or flooded.

In defense of the pythons, this is not their native habitat and it's not their fault. They were brought here and turned loose by people. They don't belong in cages in people's homes. It's not fair to them to be released into an unfamiliar habitat and then to be hunted and killed. They are simply following the course of nature. People have caused this problem. In the past five years, the United States has imported 144,563 Burmese pythons. People should have to have a license to own a dangerous pet, if these snakes should be owned by private parties at all. Pythons are breeding and can grow large enough to eat a child or domestic pet. Some are large enough to kill an adult. We have the capability to microchip them and hold their owners responsible for their whereabouts and damage done by them.

Pythons are capable of killing every type of bird and mammal in the everglades. Biologists have found the remains of squirrels, rats, bobcats, opossums, wrens and other birds in the stomachs of captured pythons. Endangered wood storks live in the Everglades National Park. Pythons, aside from killing the native animals, compete for prey and space. They are taking food from hawks, bobcats, and even native endangered indigo snakes. A giant snake can eat a large deer.

In 2002, an 8-year-old girl died in Pittsburgh after a python escaped from its cage and strangled her to death. In Colorado, that same year, it took seven firefighters to pry a 10-foot python of the neck and chest of a man who subsequently died. It seems to me that once these incidents happened, new laws should have been enacted. Apparently, no one payed much attention and now the problem is much larger and it will likely cost billions over the next few years to restore the balance of nature in the everglades. Meanwhile, the pythons have to die because they are a threat to people and native animal species.

I'm wondering why it takes something of this magnitude to get the attention of our lawmakers, who could easily ban the import of these animals except for zoos, schools, veterinarians, and reptile experts. Maybe we should ask them.

School Bus Safety

When I was growing up, most cars didn't have seat belts. I can remember driving down the street in our tank -- uh, car -- a '64 Chevy Impala, with my parents. No one had seat belts in those days. It's almost a little surreal to think about that today. Now, there are penalties for not having everyone in your car belted in. If an accident occurs and a child dies as a result of not being belted in, charges can be filed against the person responsible. As a mom, I was obsessive about infant car seats being belted in and painstakingly reading the instructions (and you know I hate reading instructions!)on how to install toddler seats. My children developed the habit of putting on seat belts as soon as they got into a vehicle. Most parents today are obsessive about making sure their children are safe in the car. So, we spend a lifetime doing that daily ritual, but when our kids get onto a school bus, there are no seat belts. Why are we okay with that? Is the cost factor worth the lives of children?

In our school district, as in many, parents are required to pay a transportation fee for their children to ride the bus to school. Between this fee and taxes, it would seem that seat belts should be in the budget. Perhaps some of Mr. Obama's health care bill costs could be cut if we had fewer injuries of children in school bus crashes.

After many fatal bus accidents,some people have begun to take notice. A research grant was awarded to the University Transportation Center for Alabama. I find this ironic. $300,000.00 was provided for a three-year pilot program. I'm not sure why we need a pilot program and dedicated research to tell us that children loose in a bus are not safe. We've all read the news reports of kids on buses getting up and causing problems, bullies, and other reasons school bus drivers have been distracted. Doesn't it make sense to provide safety belts for all children on buses for their safety and the safety of others? Wouldn't this allow the driver to pay more attention to the road and the actual driving of the bus, rather than having his or her eyes on the rearview mirror all the time the bus is moving? It makes perfect sense to me that rule number one on every school bus should be to buckle in. If a child is caught out of the seat belt, the bus doesn't move until they are back in. It wouldn't take long to train a bus full of children to stay in their seatbelts. Peer pressure is great in this respect. If a child is warned a few times, then they are no longer allowed to ride the bus for a period of time and a parent must find some other way to get them transported to school. This would keep everyone safer, and there wouldn't be kids getting up in a moving bus. There would be far less problems with bullying or injuries caused by quick stops or fender benders on the buses and our children would have a fighting chance if a bus were to have a rollover accident.

This seems like a no-brainer to me, but the experts have to do a study and report back a few years from now. They want to make sure their data is accurate. While they "get it right", I wonder if that time table will affect the lives (or shorten them) of some children around the country before seat belts become the norm. Why not cut to the chase and enact laws now that bus drivers must follow, just as parents do in cars every day? Is it fair to hold parents to a higher standard than a school bus driver? Is it reasonable or ethical to counter the due diligence of parents in their everyday routine with haphazard and downright dangerous conditions on the buses that transport their children to school each day? In my opinion, we should demand seat belts on our school buses and not take no for an answer. What is more important than the safety of our children? We can cut financial corners some other place. School buses should not even be manufactured without safety harnesses/seat belts.

For those of you with babies or small children, this is going to become a very important issue for you before you know it. Make your communities and local school districts aware of it now and your children will be safe later. It's hard enough to let them go off to school alone with they are little. They need to get there and get home safely.