An animal shelter in Detroit received a startling donation over Christmas weekend: 836 parakeets. The incident began when the son of an animal hoarder called the shelter, Detroit Animal Welfare Group, and asked to drop off between 60 to 80 parakeets. Instead, he showed up with quite a few more. Of the first 497, the shelter director Kelley LeBonty told the Detroit Free Press, “He had them all in seven cages. A very tight fit. They were kind of on top of each other and smothering each other. ... They were very very stressed. They were barely moving. We had to get them out and into different cages.” Per the Free Press, the parakeet fixer explained to the shelter that his father’s hobbyist attempt to breed the birds had “got out of control.” The hoarder had allegedly been keeping the multitude in a single cage in one room. The shelter director confirmed, “The problem is birds breed easily.” As documented on their Facebook page, the animal welfare group is now hand-feeding some baby birds cited to be motherless, and has begun accepting applications for their adoption.