Operator of Banks in Eight States Shows a Big Heart for Small Animals
For Immediate Release:
May 3, 2013
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
Tulsa, Okla. – BOK Financial Corporation, whose operations are based in Tulsa, is getting an award for a practice that has nothing to do with dollars and cents. That’s because after learning from PETA about the cruelty of using sticky glue traps to kill mice, BOK banned the devices from its approximately 200 banking locations in Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. For rejecting the cruel pest-control method, BOK Financial will receive a Compassionate Company Award from PETA and a big box of vegan chocolates shaped like mice.
“It’s wonderful to see one of the largest regional banks in the country take the suffering of the smallest and most vulnerable animals into consideration,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “Thanks to BOK’s decision to ban glue traps, mice, birds, and other small animals will be spared a terrifying and painful end.”
Glue traps are pieces of plastic or cardboard coated with a strong adhesive. After getting caught in the traps, panicked animals struggle to escape—often breaking their bones and ripping the flesh, fur, or feathers off their bodies in the process. Some animals chew off their own limbs in an attempt to free themselves, and others get their noses, mouths, or beaks stuck in the glue. The more the animals struggle, the more they stick to the traps, only to die from exhaustion, injury, shock, dehydration, asphyxiation, or blood loss. Glue traps are also ineffective because they fail to address the source of the problem—more mice simply move in to take the place of the animals who have been killed.
Like BOK—the 47th-largest financial institution in the country—22 of the nation’s top 30 financial institutions contacted by PETA have also agreed not to use glue traps.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.
