Two women who went to a friend’s house after a boozy night out and tortured and killed his pet parrot will face prison.
Nicola Bradley, 35, and Tracy Dixon, 47, doused Paul Crooks’s beloved African grey parrot Sparky in cleaning products and put her in a tumble drier before breaking her neck.
Bradley and Dixon had stayed the night at Mr Crooks’s home after he collected them from the city centre after they’d been on a night out.
But while he was out they tortured the poor bird, covering Sparky in shaving foam and Mr Muscle and throwing her in a tumble drier before eventually snapping her neck.
Dixon and Bradley both blamed each other for what happened, but after appearing at Carlisle magistrates court they were both found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering to an animal.
Mr Crooks found Sparky dead shortly after Bradley and Dixon left his home on the morning of July 30 last year.
He said Sparky was a gift from a former partner and had lived with him for five years.
Describing the parrot, he told the court: ‘Sparky was absolutely fine.
‘She used to sing a regimental march, combined with God Save the Queen, and the Coronation Street and Emmerdale theme tunes.
‘She was also a hit with friends as she’d start singing when I talked to them on video calls around the world.’
He told the court Dixon called him at 5.30am on the morning in question as they couldn’t get a taxi home from a night out.
He gave them a lift, but went to bed shortly after bringing the women home because he’d been working all week.
When he woke at 8.30am and went to the kitchen to make a coffee, Bradley told him he would be ‘foaming’ with them as she looked towards Sparky’s cage.
He saw there was shaving foam on both the cage and the bird, and when he began cleaning away the shaving foam Bradley picked up a bottle of Mr Muscle to help him.
Mr Crooks told her that was the wrong spray, telling her to use a water spray.
Returning to the kitchen later, he saw Bradley had a spoon with black paint on it.
Mr Crooks went to a local shop, returning half an hour later to see both women leaving his home.
Entering the house, he saw feathers on the living room floor and more in the kitchen, but couldn’t see Sparky.
When he found her, he described her as a ‘wet, black mess’.
He said: ‘I looked on top of the fridge freezer and on top of the kitchen unit but I couldn’t see Sparky.
‘Then I looked at her cage and noticed this unrecognisable mess, with her head hanging out of the cage.
‘She was just unrecognisable, covered in black substances. I started to panic.
‘I didn’t know what to do.’
Bradley and Dixon, who were granted bail, will be sentenced on August 22 at Carlisle crown court where magistrates warned they would face prison sentences.
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