It Was the Last Squawk--Man Throttles Parrot

A man driven to distraction by his neighbor’s noisy parrot finally strangled the bird to silence its ear-piercing squawks, a British court was told Friday.

Mark Leach, 43, and his wife Dolores kicked down the neighbor’s fence, broke into his aviary and throttled the Amazonian blue-fronted parrot after four years of incessant screeching.

The court in the English university town of Oxford fined Leach $1,015 and ordered him to pay $590 in costs after he admitted strangling the parrot.

The court heard that the bird was killed during a furious argument with neighbor Paddy Williams, who was said to have taught the bird to repeat Leach’s name up to 100 times a day.

Leach’s defense lawyer played a tape of the bird and another parrot owned by Williams in which the screeching and squawking registered nearly 90 decibels.

Williams has bought a new parrot.