Do you guys ever get comments like this?

I was telling a shop owner about Houdini, my WC baby radix. I was telling her all about how happy I was that he was chowing down on trout, and when she looked at me suspiciously and asked if trout was part of his natural diet I explained that garters did eat fish, worms, and occasionally rodents, etc. Then she asked me, "So why didn't you just let him be a happy snake out in the wild like he was meant to be?"

I felt a little bit insulted, to be honest. What makes her think I am incapable of keeping a snake "happy"? I mean, I'm not sure snakes actually feel "happiness" in the sense that humans or mammals do, but I know that it's probably safe to say that healthy = happy for a snake.

Why am I a bad person for catching one of, like, three dozen baby snakes and giving it a habitat with consistent temperatures, abundant and nutritious food, clean, fresh water, and a guarantee of never being eaten by a bird or cat or whatever?

Meanwhile his brothers and sisters will be scavenging for food that may at any time become scarce, same with the water supply, and the constant threat of some other animal eating them or a frightened person killing them... And they all probably won't live half as long as Houdini will now that he is in my care. If anything happens to Houdini, he gets to go to the vet and get fixed up whereas his siblings are just plain screwed.

It just kind of irked me that this lady suggested I was doing harm to Houdini by keeping him in captivity.

Bah.

Do you guys encounter this kind of attitude very often?