When Canyon Mansfield went for a walk near his house with his faithful companion, Kasey, he had no inkling that would be their last outing together and that the 14-year-old would witness the gruesome death of his pet dog. Mansfield and Kasey came across what’s known as an M-44 device — an exploding cylindrical canister that releases a blast of deadly sodium cyanide into whatever victim is unlucky enough to come into contact with it. Who would put such a thing near a person’s home? The answer is as appalling as it is shocking: the federal government, and it’s doing it at taxpayer expense.

Wildlife Services is a program within the U.S. Department of Agriculture that in certain circles is known as the “killing agency.” It’s the federal government’s exterminator, killing some 3 to 5 million animals each year using some of the most inhumane methods imaginable. We’re talking about chemical poisons, cruel body-gripping traps that mangle animals (target and nontarget alike), aerial gunning operations that have gone awry and led to pilot deaths, and even using vehicles to run over and hit animals in a crude attempt to knock off unwanted “pests.”