Birds die in police swoop.
Jason...@virgin.net
This is an ex-parrot and I charge you with its murder.
Birds die in police swoop.
Vanessa Large
Bird breeder Michael Liddel-Taylor felt as sick as a parrot - but not
half as sick as the one he plonked on the police station counter.
"This" he told the stunned desk sergeant, "is no more, It's stone dead.
It has ceased to be .....and it was your men who murdered it"
And so unfolded a tale that would have knocked even the most bizarre
Monty Python sketch completely off its perch.
Last week Michael and his wife Marianne were payed £20,000 compensation
for the day a flying squad swooped on their parrot sanctuary in search
of a stolen macaw - and left 15 rare birds belly up in their cages.
Feathers were ruffled when ten police cars shot into the lane leading to
the Liddel-Taylors home.
The 180 nervous birds all tried a polite "Hello, hello" as soon as they
encountered Special Branch, but then they had the droppings scared out
of them.
Flap! One parrot was so frightened by the Boys in Norwegian Blue it bit
its mates head off.
Squawk! A pair of petrified pretty Pollys trod all over their newly laid
eggs.
Screech! When an officer tapped on one macaws cage, it looked at him and
dropped dead from shock.
"Luckily our son Rupert was at school and didn't witness it" said
Michael.
The breeder even saw one cop write in his notebook "Bird bobs up and
down and says hello"
Michael asked the policemen to leave - but they refused to budgie until
they'd plodded through all of the giant cages - including those of birds
quarantined with a virus.
Then to add insult to injury, they arrested the 53-year old Parrot Park
owner - after wrongly identifying a stolen macaw.
After hours at Dereham police station in Norfolk he was able to prove
he'd bought the scarlet bird in Sweden - but returned home to find even
more parrots dying of the virus spread by pairs of police boots.
So off he stormed back to the station with a dead bird called Billy.
"When I took Billy in it was just like the Mont Python sketch" said
Michael.
"I said I wanted to report a murder and the officer took down all the
details. I was fuming"
Norfolk police authority was bought before the beak at Norwich Crown
Court. but it agreed a £20,000 settlement with Michael beforehand and
the case for wrongful arrest and trespass was dropped.
The dead birds were worth £11,000. But many were pairs whose chicks
would have enhanced the collection's value. Michael has now given up
breeding them.
His wife Marianne, 40, also lost her French pet bird Hercule in the raid
in Beeston.
"It just fell off its perch and died. It was very sad" she said.
Which proves that even Hercule Parrot is no match for a determined bunch
of bird-hunting British bobbies.