For people who care about all of God's creatures, who don't put humans and their interests above the needs of other living things, yes closing the road was a good thing. At some point we humans need to change our way of thinking and learn to share and change our own behavior, instead of running roughshod over anything that gets in our way. It's the same mentality that made genocide and extirmination of entire cultures of the peoples who lived in this country before us OK... vilify that which gets in our way as a means to justify our actions, and get rid of it.

I have an acquaintence (not a friend) who goes out of her way to run over any snake on the road. She does this on purpose because she hates snakes, no other reason. She doesn't care if they are poisonous or not, she just hates them, so she kills them and takes extreme pleasure in doing so. Does anyone else have a problem with this?? They are just icky snakes, so who really cares, right? I think it highly symptomatic of what is wrong with American society. It's the same mentality that people use to justify our actions in Iraq... i.e. killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians, not to mention thousands of our own soldiers, to meet some as-yet undefined end of making the U.S. safe from "terrorists". Or more likely securing our oil interests. Defending our American "way of life" seems to mean any action, no matter how despicable, is justifiable.

So yes, I have a problem with people who run over snakes on the road on purpose. And I think closing this road was a good thing. Perhaps there is hope, somewhere.