Man jailed for killing guinea pig he thought was a spy

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.