Over the last weekend myself and others have been dealing with a hoarding situation and rescuing birds. It's bad. http://imgur.com/a/36qEq You can see here a few shots of where they come from. All those papers on the floor? That's dog feces covered with paper before there was more feces covered with more paper, repeat until it's thick enough you can't feel the floor beneath in many spots. The birds were in an environment filled with dust, mold, filth and other dangers. Once there were many many birds found here. And they could have been saved.

A lot of people are immediately jumping up with things like "Oh god she should suffer as much!" "I hope that person is given the same treatment!" "How could she?! She's evil!" No. She's not. That's a hard admission, especially when you've seen stuff like this outside of pictures. She's sick. Hoarding is a disease, a mental disease in which a person is convinced they are saving these animals. It starts slowly, a few birds or cats or dogs, and perhaps they don't have a lot of money, but they take them in. And it gets worse from there.

In some cases, they see animals in need or given away for free and take them in afraid no one else will give them a good home. But in most cases what happens is they get one or two unfixed animals (or in the case of birds some breeding pairs) and they have offspring. They are convinced those babies can't have other homes because only THEY can take care of them. And it starts a cycle. it never starts out bad, but things slip, things become normal and they become dissentized to things that are horrifying for the rest of us. So there's a little poop on the floor, that's not so bad, just a few dirty spots. Okay, so it's a bigger mess than it used be, but you have a lot to do and you love your pets, so you can do it, you can handle it. You love them.

So you can't feed them what people say they should have? They have homes and love, and they're getting fed what you can give them. They still look pretty good, you're doing the best you have. You get more and more, you sort of lose track of how many, but they're all getting fed right? And then.. they start to pass away. Many justify this as normal, as something that it must be old age or something else, they start justifying so much because they love these animals. They might not have everything they should, but they care about them, name them, see them born and watch them grow. That's what's important, you love them! That's what happened here.

This should have been over nearly two years ago. That's when a sister stepped in and began to push to have the birds rescued, but it didn't go the way it should. These situations have to be handled DELICATELY. The first instinct is to march in in horror, demand the animals be gotten rid of, removed entirely, look at how this person is living! The moment you storm in making demands and ultimatums that person is going to shut you the fuck out. They're not going to listen. You're talking about pets they consider their children, pets they love and adore, how dare you try and remove them. SO nearly two years ago when this person started to reach out, they shut down before things could even begin.

They need help, they need a lot of help. Two years ago people could have gone in and delivered food and helped clean and get things straightened out. The sick could have gotten vet care and help before they were too far gone. They could have found safe good homes instead of being sold off on a website to anyone who would want them no matter if there might have been disease rampant in the group. Do not come across these people and begin to yell and snarl at them, to threaten them with legal repercussions, to try and force them to give up their animals. They will balk, they will shut down and shut you out. As hard as it is to bottle up your anger and visceral responses you need to remember, these people aren't doing this to be cruel. They don't set out going "I'm going to hurt animals for fun". They tend to be people who've fallen in too deep and need help.