Most teenagers have something they don’t want their parents to find hidden away in their rooms—porn, birth control receipts, pot, porn, weapons, brochures for Mime College, porn. But I think it’s a safe guess that when you’re snooping around through your kid’s diary or secret under-the-floor-planks-stash, you really don’t expect to find a helpless, shivering baby bird.

Let alone 53 of them.

That’s exactly what a mother from Longmont, Colorado found when she opened the door to her 15-year-old son’s room. Apparently the teen had been hoarding the birds for over 24 hours. Though he’s been questioned by police, the boy has yet to provide a reason. I’m thinking the youngster must be a Hitchcock fan, myself. He was obviously planning on making a sequel to The Birds—The Birds II: Hatchlings.

Apparently, the kid—along with some neighborhood buddies—had been trying to feed the birds, so perhaps torture is out. Still, rescuing one bird—or a whole nest of them, even—is one thing; but 53? And there were a variety of species, too—barn swallows, a bluebird and sparrows. These kids had to be doing some serious nest-robbing.

Whether movie-making, surrogate mothering or plain old unimaginable animal torture were on the boy’s brain, his dreams were short-lived. After his mother found his “collection,” she called animal control straight away.  Animal Control then had them sent to the Greenwood Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Boulder straight away.

40 of them died. The remaining 13 are still receiving care at the rehabilitation center. Workers expect for them to make it. They say that baby birds like these must be fed every forty-five minutes and kept warm in able to survive.

Center officials say that while baby birds may seem to be alone sometimes in the wild, their parents are usually nearby hunting for food, so they should be left alone.

The teen received a ticket for cruelty to animals and interference with wild birds. Caring for wild birds in any case is illegal in Colorado. The rehabilitation operations manager, Gabriele Paul, says, “Every once in a while we get animals from people who mean well. They don’t know it’s illegal to do it themselves.”

But you gotta wonder if something else is needed—like a class or therapy or something. Though his intentions seem benign, what if they weren’t? You know what happens to people who mess around with animals, like blowing up frogs and such—they become president. And that’s every mother’s worst fear.