Responding to widespread alarm over its 'Catcha Cray' game, the management of K' Road's gay Naval & Family pub have decided to get rid of the "cruel" machine.
At $3 a go, players try to Catcha Cray from the machine by manipulating a metal claw which descends to pick up live crayfish. Animal advocacy group Save Animals Form Exploitation (SAFE) are campaigning for the machines to be removed, saying they "stress and torment" the animals.
Tonight the pub's boss Wayne Clark says the machine - which this week has been widely condemned by the pub's staff and punters alike - will be taken away tomorrow.
GayNZ.com's story about Catcha Cray on Sunday prompted instant and visceral reactions on our Forum, with one member calling the machine a "torture device". "There are certain levels of vileness that cannot be countenanced," typed another, while a third reflected: "This completely freaks me out. I can't understand what sort of pleasure you would get from it."
The Naval & Family pub will tomorrow become the second Auckland bar to remove the machine, after Kingsland's The Kinglander pub expelled theirs following complaints by several customers. The Albion on Hobson Street and Northcote's The Backyard Bar also have Catcha Cray machines in operation.
