LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — The man accused of taking a flamingo from a Las Vegas Strip habitat testified in his own defense as his trial continued Friday.
Mitchell Fairbairn, 34, took the stand in his animal cruelty trial and repeatedly denied he meant to hurt Peachy the Flamingo when he carried him to his hotel room March 3.
“Did you ever, at any time, have any malicious intent or desire?” his attorney asked. “No,” Fairbairn said. “Did you intend to kill?” “No.”
During his testimony, Fairbairn said he lives in central Ontario, runs an excavation business started in 2014, is married, and has three children. He said he grew up on farms, owns dogs and a parrot Sonny, and once rescued an abandoned llama and six ducks.
He mentioned being in Las Vegas for ConExpo, “a global construction show that happens every three years,” where he was asked to be “one of the representatives from Canada.”
Fairbarn also added that his father had been diagnosed with cancer in December 2025 and he was “on the fence about coming at all.”
He said he spent March 2 drinking, an estimated 30 to 40 beers, gambling, then stopped at the habitat around 5 a.m. drunk, sleep-deprived and on a call. He mentioned entering the habitat to look at a bird with “uneven” wings while also acknowledging he shouldn’t go in.
Inside, he said he sat with one flamingo (not Peachy), then grabbed Peachy as a “silly pranky joke” to photograph, carried it to his room for “two or three minutes,” put it in the hallway, and was arrested changing to return it.
Fairbarn also mentioned being on house arrest since and has not been able to return to Canada since. Under cross examination, he later admitted that the video “doesn’t look good” and Peachy was hurt, saying “I’m taking responsibility,” but claimed “I have no idea” how feathers were lost.
Jury questions
The jury had several questions for Fairbarn.
Q: At the beginning of the video of the island, the birds are asleep and aren’t falling down. So the question is, if you know, do flamingos naturally, physically lay down?
A: They can, or when they’re doing the building nests and stuff.
Q: If the birds were in a resting, sleeping position, how could you tell the wings were uneven?
A: From where I was standing on the platform, on the main fence, one of their wings, one looked higher than the other.
Q: I just wanted clarification about the reasoning behind going into the exhibit initially. Was it because you saw a bird potentially in distress? Or was it to create a lasting memory of the trip?
A: The very intentional moment was to go see the bird that I thought looked funny. Ended up being to make it a funny trip while I was already there.
Q: At any point during your interacting with Peachy, did you notice his injuries or bleeding slash blood on your shirt or wall?
A: No.
Q: If someone hops your fence and enters your farm and hurts an animal that you own, what is your expectation of local law enforcement?
A: That’s a good question. I would say a proper investigation to ensure that an individual that took it actually is the one who harmed it.
Q: Is being intoxicated an excuse to hurt anything, either a man, a woman, an animal, regardless of intent?
A: No.
Q: What happened to the rescue ducks?
A: We got them in 2018, I believe. We had them for three years. We sold the property and the homeowners took them. Because they were living in one.
Q: How much do you drink on a typical day?
A: Not a lot. Nowhere near what I drank here.
Q: When you noticed a bird with its wings tucked, how did you know which bird to head for when you were on the island? Or how did you know it was the right bird?
A: From what I’d seen, once I got in there and walked up to it, that’s the one that I thought was the same one that I’d seen on the other side of the pink fence.
Q: When did you take off your shirt to wrap around Peachy’s body?
A: When I was leaving the exhibit, there’s waist height hedges. That’s when I took my shirt off to wrap around the birds so the birds didn’t get bricked because they’re all perked.
Q: You stated you walked through the bushes. Did you sustain any scratches to your arms or your body?
A: Not that I remember. I don’t believe so.
Q: Can you clarify if you walked through the bushes while holding the bird?
A: Yes, I did.
Q: Was the bird healthy when you took it out of its habitat?
A: I did not see anything wrong with it when I took it.
Q: When the flamingo tucks its head under its wings to sleep, couldn’t that cause the wings to look uneven or could that cause the wings to look uneven?
A: For sure, yes.
The trial resumes Monday morning with closing arguments before jury deliberation.
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