Stop Feeding Live Mice to Birds in Front of Small Children.

This year I was at a summer camp called Camp Ocean Pines where they have a variety of activities. I was surprised and disturbed when their Junior Falconry program was about to feed a live mouse to a red hawk. I was the oldest person there at 15, but there were children as young as 8 there. Not wanting an innocent mouse to be eaten alive, I stepped in and opened the cage, letting the mouse run free.

I have 2 main reasons for this petition:

1. Feeding a helpless mouse to a hawk is cruel. In the wild when a hawk is about to catch a mouse, the mouse has a chance to run and hide. When trapping a mouse in the cage you are taking away his/her defenses. They even said they had frozen mouse bits, so why feed a mouse live to this bird?

2. Watching this act would not only disturb me, but the younger children at that camp. Do you really want your kids to see a helpless animal get eaten? The fear in that mouse's eyes in those last moments of life must be unimaginable. I am asking this camp to stop feeding live mice to hawk and let them go free.