People think feeding live is bad. There is nothing wrong with feeding live when it is done right. As for me "holding" the rat down, I actually wasn't. You can see that I was standing by watching to make sure nothing went wrong. When she hit the rat, she hit it a bit wrong and the rats mouth/teeth were to close to her head for my comfort. So as you can see in the video I had tongs in hand and acted in getting the rats mouth away from her head in case it was able to reach and bite her. I do this with every one of my snakes that eats live.

She is now 1800grams empty