Feathers were flying on Staten Island after a woman deliberately turned her neighbors’ pet guinea hen into road kill — and then stuffed a lit cigarette in its beak and took pictures, police said.
“I was being a jerk,” Michelle Conti told authorities questioning her about the hen homicide, according to court papers.
“That’s not a crime,” she insisted.
Conti, 32, for some 16 years, has had a bone to pick with the bird’s owners, a couple who live next door with the 19 fowls they have left.
On Sunday, she “snapped,’’ said 80-year-old Charles Gable.
First she allegedly punched him in the chest, knocking him to the ground.
Then she drove straight into his flock.
Conti — who was charged with criminal mischief and animal cruelty for running over the hen— offered a “blame the victim’’ defense.
She claims the birds were making her “crazy.’’
She also is facing an assault charge for punching Gable, authorities said.
Gable told The Post, “it’s a horrible thing that she did, but my neighbor is not all there.’’
“She has some serious mental issues. Two hours after [after running over the hen] she comes back and kicks the bird and then she puts a cigarette in its mouth and takes pictures. Does it get any more sick than that?’’
Gable and Cavuto live in a large converted barn.
Their hens have a pen in the back.
The flock was attacked when the couple let the birds out briefly for exercise and some of them wandered onto the road.
The bird who died was part of a pair Cavuto called the “teenagers,’’ because in “bird years’’ they were 15, she explained.
Their remaining birds are in a state of grief, she said.
“The birds can tell that one of their own is missing,’’ she said.
“They’re a family, just like any other.”
But Conti considers her act justifiable homicide.
The birds, she said, “make noises and sounds from sunup to sundown, which cause me not to sleep.’’
No only that, she claimed, their poop fouls the street in front of their house.