Thursday, June 23, 2011

Man accused of eating live baby rat pleads not guilty

A man charged with aggravated animal abuse for allegedly eating a live baby rat and posting a video of it on the Internet made a brief court appearance on Tuesday. Andy Ray Harris, 31, is charged in Tooele's 3rd District Court with aggravated cruelty to an animal, a class A misdemeanor.



During a brief hearing before Judge Robert Adkins, Harris pleaded not guilty to the charge. His attorney then asked for more time to explore a couple of motions he was considering. A pretrial conference was scheduled for July 19.

On March 16, Harris allegedly ate a live, hairless baby rat on a dare. The rat was allegedly set to be fed to a pet snake. A video of Harris' eating the rat was later posted on the Internet.



The video shows a small rat, about 2 to 3 inches long, on a notepad. Harris then picks up the rat, puts it in his mouth, chews, and then take a drink from a straw out of a giant mug. He then high-fives someone off camera.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's gross, but how is that any different than giving the rat to the snake that is going to do the same thing... death by bite or death be constriction.

cath said...

I think the difference is that a snake HAS to eat live animals; it can't choose to be a vegetarian or to only eat animals killed humanely (or "humanely," depending on your views). Humans do have the choice, and in most societies we've created laws regulating which animals can be killed and how.

I don't know but I suspect that it would also be (legally) considered animal cruelty to feed a live rat to a dog -- not because the dog has a choice, but because dogs don't need to eat live prey, and thus we have a choice not to feed it to them. But that's just a guess.

Eve said...

In other news, millions go to prison for using rat traps. Oh, wait...

cath said...

@Eve: Well put; point taken :) (Also, I had a bit of a chuckle.)

Anonymous said...

Only way he can get noticed!