A man on Florida’s Gulf coast has been charged with animal cruelty after authorities said he killed, cooked and ate two of his pet peacocks to spite a neighbor.

Craig Vogt, 61, was arrested on 23 September on a third-degree felony charge of aggravated animal cruelty, according to an affidavit from the Pasco county sheriff’s office, as the Miami Herald reported.

The arrested man allegedly told investigators that he had killed the two peacocks because his neighbor kept feeding them. He had written the neighbor a letter telling her that he would continue to kill his pet peacocks if she kept feeding them “to prove a point”, according to the affidavit, which did not say how many peacocks he kept.

The man “admitted to killing the bird by cutting the bird’s neck out of spite, then bleeding it out, and then later eating the bird after cooking it on a frying pan”, the affidavit said.

While he was being taken to jail, the man told deputies that he would kill all of his pet peacocks upon release to prevent anyone from taking them, the sheriff’s office report said.

The Pasco county sheriff’s office on Monday did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the fate of the remaining peacocks.

An online docket showed no attorney listed for the man.

Guardian staff contributed reporting