Before the Swedes banned the use of steel-jaw leghold traps, they held a fox-trapping campaign. Some of the foxes knocked out as many as 18 teeth as they frantically lashed out trying to escape. A few gnawed off their own legs to break free. Of the 645 trapped foxes, 514 were seriously injured.

The fur trim on the hood of your parka could be the bloody corpse of a trapped fox. Or it could be faux fur. Which would you rather wear next to your face?

Friday was "Fur Free Friday," since 1986 a day of protest against slaughtering animals for their fur. A Voice for Animals, a San Antonio advocacy group, staged a protest on Broadway.

Here in South-Central Texas, fur is absurd. It's not as if some local Dr. Zhivago has to bundle his Lara in a mound of mink blankets for the trek across the snow drifts to Seguin. This isn't Chicago, let alone the steppes of Russia. But all of us, even if we live in the sunny South, should care about the inhumane way animals are raised, trapped and killed for their fur.

Before I return to leghold traps, let's visit a fur ranch. Yes, they call them ranches! Disabuse yourself of any romantic notions of longhorn mink at home on the range, herded by little minkboys tossing tiny lariats.

The male mink is a traveling man, with a range of about 25 miles, taking about a week to make a circuit of his turf. They are semi-aquatic mammals who hang out around lakes, creeks and marshes. A male grows to be 20 to 30 inches long.

In a fur ranch, the mink will be kept in a cage, typically 10 inches wide by 24 inches long. No wiggle room. No water to frolic in, no well-worn paths to cruise. Many experience psychological trauma with symptoms such as ulcers and cannibalism.

When it's time for the kill, most mink are murdered by poison gas, lethal injection or breaking their little necks. They fare better than farmed foxes, which are most commonly killed by anal electrocution. To kill a chinchilla, ranchers hook one metal clamp to the ear and another to the genitalia, then zap electricity through the circuit. Chinchillas are small. A hundred of them are slaughtered to make a full-length fur coat.

And people want to wear that next to their own skin? Ugh!

Each year 10 million animals are trapped in the wild, so they can be skinned for fur coats and that little bit of furry fluff on the cuffs and collar of your high-fashion sweater.

Leghold traps are inhumane and indiscriminate. Their spring-loaded jaws snap shut when an animal puts its paw in it. Animals panic, struggling wildly, breaking teeth, fracturing limbs and snapping tendons. Sometimes other body parts — a snout, an abdomen — are gripped.

About a quarter of wild animals will gnaw off a leg trying to escape. Those who break free have little chance of survival.

Trappers — most of them part time — may not get around to checking their traps for two or three days, so some animals die of cold, thirst or starvation, are preyed on by other animals or die of blood loss or gangrene.

Leghold traps are banned or restricted in eight states and 88 nations. In 1995, the European Union banned leghold traps and the import of fur caught by them. We have until 2004 to stop using leghold traps if we want to keep importing fur to Europe.

H.R. 1800, banning the interstate movement of leghold traps and the pelts trapped using them, was introduced in April. Let your representative know that you want him to support this ban.

Fashion need not be bought with the pain and suffering of animals. As St. Francis reminds us, "If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men."

Susan Ives can be reached at suives@texas.net.