It's nothing rare, but very cruel indeed. My wife's son has a snake. I had the *brilliant* idea of serving the mouse to it just before getting out of the house, and that was because the snake didn't want to eat it since nearly a month before... We returned very late and found the darn rat eating the back of the snake! ALIVE! It was such a macabrous picture. It turned out I was giving the rat Whiskas, which have taurine, which is in the energy drinks! The rat became so aggressive that even after taking it out of the snake house it bit me so I drowned it right away. It was horrible. Meanwhile the snake was so badly hurt that I was thinking of cutting its head off to stop the suffering. I didn't so her son called a veterinarian. He did I don't know what but saved the snake. It has been like four years and the snake is alive, well, eating big mice again, happy, but it can't move the parts that were bitten of it. Remarkable. that night I learned that unhappy snakes don't eat. It was sick, cold, and suffering. We changed it house for a bigger one and cared more about the temperature and some branches for it to climb. BTW I still can't really tell the difference between rats and mice. There are big mice and little rats.