A WOMAN has been found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering to a gerbil.

The hungry and thirsty rodent was found in a cage in the kitchen of a council house in Trimdon Village, County Durham, after the RSPCA was tipped off earlier this year.

RSPCA officer Ian Jackson said an inspector had entered the house, in Hallgarth Road, with help from Sedgefield Borough Council officers, and the cage containing the gerbil was recovered.

Inspector Jackson said urine and faeces were littered round the open cage and the floor, and work surfaces of the kitchen.

When the gerbil was taken to a vet it drank non-stop for two-and-a-half minutes and ravenously ate some apple.

The albino pet, believed to be aged about five, has been found a new home.

Durham magistrates heard that the tenant of the house at the time, Jean Teasdale, was interviewed and she initially claimed she had been visiting her sister in North Yorkshire.

But when she appeared before the court yesterday, 29-year-old Teasdale said she had gone to live with a friend in Trimdon Station, in January, although she claimed she returned every few days to feed and water the gerbils.

She said there had been another gerbil, a black one, in with the albino, but no one knew what became of it.

Teasdale, of Wood View, Trimdon Station, denied a charge of abandoning the gerbils without reasonable excuse in circumstances likely to cause them unnecessary suffering.

She was found guilty by the magistrates, who adjourned the case, bailing Teasdale to return to the court in three weeks for sentence.