Brandon residents find several decapitated birds in neighborhood

BRANDON, Fla. - Neighbors in the Sterling Ranch subdivision woke up to find several dead birds, headless and lying on the sidewalk Sunday morning. 

The chickens, a pigeon, and a guinea fowl were found near the corner of Providence Ridge Boulevard and Glen Forge Street in Brandon.

"We've never seen just decapitated animals here on our street or in our neighborhood before," neighbor Cindy McGrew-Thomas said.

McGrew-Thomas was out on a walk Sunday morning when she made the gruesome discovery.

"The whole thing is disturbing to me," Raptor Center of Tampa Bay President & Founder Nancy Murrah said. "The birds were decapitated, and their bodies were left, and their heads were separated from their bodies, so the whole thing is disturbing on a lot of levels."

READ: Watch: Bull runs into rodeo crowd after escaping from pen at Florida State Fairgrounds

As Murrah explained, the birds are domestic meaning their not a protected species, so the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission wouldn't have jurisdiction.

"We tried calling the sheriffs and the sheriffs initially said, 'oh, yeah, we'll come out.' And then they said, 'no, it's probably Santeria. It's religious, and we can't do anything about it,'" Murrah said.

Santeria is a religion known to perform animal sacrifices. A spokesperson with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office told FOX 13 because domestic killings – for example harvesting chickens for food – isn't a crime, it's a tough case to pursue and with no surveillance video of the people carrying out the killings. It's hard to say if what happened warrants animal cruelty charges.

"I have no problems with people raising food, but to kill something needlessly and maybe in their opinion, it's not needlessly, but to leave it for the rest of us who totally don't understand this," Murrah said. "Don't kill things needlessly."

Murrah said she has seen similar situations involving religious animal sacrifices, but never in a residential neighborhood. Both hope whoever did this doesn't do it again.

"I would just like it to not happen here in our neighborhood," McGrew-Thomas said.