A champion mouse breeder who was tormented for months by youths finally snapped when he spotted someone stealing his pears, a court was told yesterday.

Tim Kniveton blew a fuse after teenagers threw eggs at his farmhouse home, damaged fencing and pinched his fruit.

Dressed in khaki green shorts, he waited in ambush for his 14-year-old paperboys, who he suspected were part of the gang of tormentors.

Stephen Duffield, prosecuting at Teesside Crown Court, told how 59-year-old Kniveton had set a trap on two separate days.

A neighbour, solicitor John Dobson, told police he was driving his silver Mercedes when he came upon the retired tree surgeon with one of the boys.

Kniveton had blood on his shorts, forehead and the backs of his hands. When asked what was happening, he said: "I'm sick. They've been pinching my produce, damaging my fence and threw eggs at the house. I've told the police and nothing happened, and this morning I've ambushed them."

He was holding a 12in-bar, and added: "I've took this off them this morning."

The teenager, who was treated in hospital for cuts and bruises, told staff Kniveton punched him in the face several times, sat on him and hit him again.

Mr Duffield said the mouseman had leapt into action a few days earlier when he spotted a boy taking some pears from a tree in his garden.

"He chased the youngster, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and gave him a hiding," said Mr Duffield.

The boy did not seek medical treatment for his injuries.

Kniveton, who won the Crufts of the mouse world at Doncaster with a chocolate-coloured mouse, replied "No comment" when police asked him about the incident.

He moved to South Loftus Farm in retirement for a quiet life, but became a target for yobs from nearby Loftus, east Cleveland.

Kniveton pleaded guilty to assault causing actual bodily harm and assault by beating last August.

John Gillette, mitigating, said: "He was subjected to long torment and believed the victims were part of a larger group who were responsible.

"It is not known whether they caused damage in the past. He was not accustomed to that sort of behaviour and it came a point where he snapped, but went too far."

Character witnesses wrote of Kniveton's "normally passive personality", said Mr Gillette, adding: "His is a personality that would not normally resort to anything approaching an act like this unless there had been ongoing pressure."

The judge, Recorder Paul Worsley, told Kniveton: "I am confident that the court will never again see you in the dock and you may go.

"What you did was to act in a wholly unacceptable fashion to two paperboys, on two separate occasions, who you were satisfied in your mind had been stealing your produce and indulging in some conduct that was provocative.

"This court can understand your frustration at what they did, but likewise, the court has to protect youngsters, who without the benefit of your wisdom, behave in a certain way."

Kniveton was given a one-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay £150 compensation to one of the boys and £50 to the other, plus £100 prosecution costs.