Thank you to the rescuers and rehabilitators who are helping foxes recently injured in cruel traps (“Police investigating illegal animal traps in Arlington,” Metro, Oct. 5). There’s a good reason that Massachusetts, at least eight other US states, and more than 100 countries have prohibited these insidious devices.
Steel-jaw leghold traps can tear flesh, break bones, and cut tendons and ligaments, and animals may even sever their own limbs to escape them. Tragically, one of the foxes in Arlington had to have a leg amputated. Other types of body-gripping traps are designed to kill an animal when two rotating jaws slam down on each side of the neck or chest, but they often don’t deliver a lethal blow and instead cause unimaginable suffering. Ghastly wire neck snares cause asphyxia and death. If animals survive any of these tortures, it’s only until the trapper returns to kill them.
