A man has been jailed for 50 days for dissecting his daughter's guinea pig
believing it was a government spy.
Benny Zavala, 35, who has already served the time, was also placed on
three
years' probation.
He was also ordered to seek psychiatric and drug counselling.
Jurors in Ventura, California, convicted Zavala of cruelty to animals for
starving the animal to death and for being under the influence of
methamphetamine.
"It's not often you have someone this paranoid from using drugs that they
think a guinea pig is spying on them for the government," Deputy District
Attorney Tom Connors said. The paranoia was apparently a byproduct of
Zavala's methamphetamine use, not mental illness.
Police arrested Zavala in September 2001 after a neighbour reported he had
hit the guinea pig with a screwdriver and had cut it open and ripped out
its
teeth.
After dissecting the animal, he called relatives and said, "The good news
is
guinea bleeds. The bad news is guinea's dead," Connors told jurors during
the trial.
Zavala told the neighbour he thought the pet's teeth were bar-coded and
that
there was a camera in the animal's head.
© Associated Press
Robin
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