I feed live most of the time because of super picky eating. But I am right there wight a pencil to jam in the rats mouth if it tries to bite my snake.

Actually last week, my mojo nailed the rat and he coiled it in a way that didn't allow me to see where the rats mouth was, but apparently the rat had bit my mojo while being constricted. There was a decent amount of blood but he's fine now... I'm not a huge fan of feeding live simply because of the safety issue to the snake, but with the picky eaters, sometimes it's just gotta be done.