Officially gone 'round the bend

I was just combing through the trivia listings for The Shawshank Redemption and ran across this nugget:

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals monitored the filming of scenes involving Brooks' crow. During the scene where he fed it a maggot, the ASPCA objected on the grounds that it was cruel to the maggot, and required that they use a maggot that had died from natural causes. One was found, and the scene was filmed.

Seriously.

Now what did they do to find a maggot that had "died of natural causes?" Did they perform a maggot autopsy? Personally, I suspect James Whitmore murdered a maggot to get on with the scene. Honestly, how would they know? How deep could this conspiracy go?