Mitchell Fairbarn got drunk and inexplicably picked up a flamingo, his attorney said. His friend Mitchell Harrison also drank heavily, met a woman on Fremont Street and decided to get married.

The wild, alcohol-soaked Las Vegas adventure ended very differently for the two Canadian visitors.

Fairbarn was arrested and is now on trial, facing two felony counts of cruelty to animals. Authorities allege he stole a flamingo named Peachy from the Flamingo resort’s habitat in the early morning of March 3, took it back to his hotel room and tortured it.

Harrison, who testified at Fairbarn’s trial Thursday, went to a gentleman’s club with his newfound love interest, but did not end up getting married immediately because friends of the woman talked her out of it. He said he and the Australian woman he met are still together.

The very eventful trip was like something out of the movie “The Hangover,” defense attorney Josh Tomsheck told jurors.

“Mitch was drunk, Mitch was stupid, Mitch made bad decisions that forever impacted his life,” he said of Fairbarn.

But the attorney argued that his client was still not guilty of the charges against him.

A charging document alleges that Fairbarn “did willfully, unlawfully, maliciously, and feloniously torture or unjustifiably maim or mutilate an animal kept for companionship or pleasure.”

Tomsheck said Fairbarn did not act with malice and did not intend to torture, maim or mutilate Peachy. He also suggested that the flamingo was not an animal kept for companionship or pleasure.

The defendant saw a bird that seemed “out of sorts” and at the time, thought it made sense to enter the habitat, the lawyer said.

In the prosecution’s opening statement Wednesday, Assistant District Attorney Alex Chen said Fairbarn claimed he was trying to help the flamingo, but that there was nothing wrong with the birds.

“He took the flamingo because he wanted the flamingo,” the prosecutor said.

Tomsheck said Fairbarn, who owns a construction company, came to Las Vegas for a construction trade show. The day he arrived, he learned his father, who was battling cancer, had been hospitalized, Tomsheck said.

“He was going to go back home, but because he was already here, he and his friends decided to have that one full day of letting loose before he went home,” he said.

The attorney described his client as an “animal lover” who owns two dogs and watches TV with his pet parrot perched on his shoulder. He said Fairbarn and his family rescue birds and that Fairbarn knows how to handle them.

Some witnesses disagreed.

Tiffany Moore, veterinarian for the Flamingo’s wildlife habitat, said Peachy’s behavior in a video, including making noise and spreading his wings, indicated he was in distress. The video, played in court Thursday, showed men laughing as Fairbarn handled the bird. Holding the bird the way that was shown in the video could cause respiratory distress and failure as well as death, she said.

She determined that Peachy had lost a blood feather, had a blood feather broken and suffered inflammation on his right wing. Blood feathers are feathers that regenerate and are attached to nerves and a blood vessel, she said.

Moore said she gave Peachy antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory injection for pain. Flamingos generally do not like to be handled, but he was more agitated than usual and trembled during an examination, she said.

Chen said Wednesday that Fairbarn and his friend laughed about pinning the bird to the ground.

“This wasn’t just some joke, it wasn’t just some prank, it actually led to Peachy the flamingo being injured,” he told jurors.

Jamie Nevarez, the wildlife curator for the Flamingo’s habitat, said the way Fairbarn handled Peachy was “horrific.”

“I can’t imagine how scared he was, not being with his flock,” she said.

Flamingos like to be close to their flock, but after the incident, Peachy was monitored in a closed area, Nevarez said.

“His mate Bugsy did not stop calling for him the entire day,” she testified.

Harrison, Fairbarn’s friend, said he woke up to a flamingo in his hotel room.

“It was standing there,” he said. “We were staring at it.”

Before the seriousness of the incident dawned on him, Harrison said he bought a stuffed flamingo as a souvenir of the trip.

“We were definitely getting kicked out of the hotel,” Joshua Kelly, another friend, testified Thursday. But at the time, he did not expect Fairbarn to be accused of a felony.

Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com.