The plant that I yank in this video was likely _Daucus carota,_ that is, 'wild carrot,' or 'Queen Anne's Lace,' and probably not Poison Hemlock. The two plants look nearly identical. So if you don't know (or can't tell) the difference, don't eat it. *****
Relax those sensitivities, please. We're all worms' meat. But for the lucky snake's part, terror does not exist in the meantime. To it, pain is simply another minor buzz of barely noticeable perception, which is devoid of that passionate care of avoidance you and I prefer to infuse it with. The concept of non-existence does not register for a snake. Abstracts are not within its purview. There is nothing for it to fear, and nothing to cause it to suffer. Don't apply your standard to it; such is just a foolish anthropomorphosis from another self-important cry-baby. There is no snake- not as you see it, anyway. Its experience is a blank stare that moves only for self-interest. As such, don't waste your compassion, especially not while our fellow humans still suffer medieval conditions which stem largely from our own negligence and dispassion. That's right, PETA people: I'm blatantly calling you and your misplaced priorities unethical. And if the sight of one disjointed serpent moved the pace of your heartbeat by a single pulse, then you are my evidence for this disparity.
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Snakes are not apex predators. That was a misstatement. Some may be, but not the little ones around here that still get carried off to lunch by hawks and racoons (or larger snakes). The main point stands, though: consumers have less ecological value than producers. A snake might be a secondary or tertiary consumer*, but to be an apex, it must not get consumed (at least until after it dies).
*It's all about sunlight. Primary and secondary just mean first and second; that is, first and second things in the chain of consumption. Grass is a producer, because it converts (produces) stores of usable energy from sunlight. The first thing to eat that bottled sunlight is a primary consumer. The thing that eats the primary consumer is a secondary consumer, and so on.
If you're a quaternary (fourth) consumer, there's four links of the chain that must live and die for you to get a share of sunlight, which, from an energy usage point-of-view, is extremely inefficient. That's what I mean when I say that a consumer has a low value. True apex predators, like us, are virtually worthless to an ecological system. "Keeping the rodents down" is the common cliché to which I was referring in that footnote, and it's a pretty pervasive overstatement of what is truly valuable to a healthy green economy. Then what is/are valuable? Trees. But (so far as we know) they don't have a conscious experience that's capable of producing value insofar as we understand the qualitative aspect of such an experience. So here we are, full circle, back at that balance thing. Thus, let's try to kill only what we need to, and never without forethought and consideration of the system that we're affecting by doing so.
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This is something like what I want to make:
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