Feathers fly over parakeet
‘Defamed’ sitter sues amid bird-kill claim
The owner of the Midtown pet-boarding facility Bird Camp is crying fowl in a defamation lawsuit against a family for claiming in online reviews that she killed their canary-winged parakeet, Polly.
Bird Camp has “boarded birds for 16 years without incident,” proprietor Rosalee Gibson says in her new Manhattan Supreme Court suit against the Vandekieft family — wife Jennifer, husband Kenneth, daughter Emily and mother Erna West.
The suit comes a month after the Vandekiefts sued the East 53rd Street boarding facility in June in Small Claims Court over Polly’s “brutal death” from avian tuberculosis.
After the case was tossed, Gibson, who owns Bird Camp, countersued for defamation.
Emily Vandekieft and her grandmother had posted negative reviews of the aviary on Google and Yelp, Gibson alleges in the new claim.
“Fly, not run, away from Bird Camp!” Emily urged in a review attached to Gibson’s new suit.
Polly, who had a life span of over 15 years, was just 4 when she went to stay at Bird Camp from Dec. 28, 2016, through Jan. 3, 2017.
Two weeks later, Jennifer Vandekieft, a Douglas Elliman broker, returned to the pet store for millet and Nutri-Berries to “entice Polly to eat,” Gibson’s suit says.
“On Jan. 23, [Gibson] received an extremely belligerent telephone call from defendants Jennifer and Kenneth alleging, without basis, that Polly ‘contracted a virus’ during the period of her boarding at Bird Camp,” Gibson says in her suit.
Polly died at The Center for Avian and Exotic Medicine on the Upper West Side on Jan. 30. “A full necropsy showed that Polly died from avian tuberculosis, a condition that is not viral,” Gibson claims.
She claims she spoke to experts who said “it was impossible for Polly to have contracted this disease at the Bird Camp facility” because “it takes months or years for it to manifest through- out the body until death ensues.”
Gibson claims the Vandekiefts threatened to ruin her business with negative online reviews if she didn’t pay Polly’s $1,700 veterinarian bill.
She sued after they made good on the threats with “negative and false reviews” in mid-November.
But the Vandekiefts insist Bird Camp was responsible for Polly’s untimely demise.
“She killed our bird,” Jennifer, 46, told The Post.
“It was just devastating, just absolutely devastating.”
Gibson’s defamation suit seeks unspecified damages.