MENANDS, N.Y. (NEWS10) – A Western New York SPCA reaches out for help after encountering one of the largest cases of neglected animals they’ve ever had and now a local humane society from the Capitol Region has answered that call.

The Mohawk Hudson Humane Society rescues animals from across the state, but a recent case is one that workers here tell me they’ll never forget.

Think about the number 60. It’s past halfway to 100. It’s the number of seconds in a minute, the number of minutes in an hour. It’s a lot.

It’s also how much domesticated rats the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society helped rescue.

“We certainly see cruelty cases with large number of animals,” President and CEO of the humane society, Brad Shear said. “It’s pretty unusual for us to see this number of rodents.”

Shear is the president and CEO. Helping rescue animals is what they do.

“It’s at the core of who we are and it’s important to the community as a whole,” Shear said.

Usually they focus on local animals, but when Niagara County’s SPCA reached out from the other side of New York, Shear and his team rushed into action.

“They put a call to shelters all across the state looking for help because they had several large scale cruelty cases come in at the same time,” Shear explained.

Two separate cases. 60 total domesticated rats, all of them neglected and in need of help.

“Our staff went out yesterday and picked up 60 rats and mice and brought them back here to the shelter in Menands,” Shear said.

They went literally the extra mile to help animals in need.

“We always want to help animals wherever we can so if we have the capacity to do that, we are always going to do so,” Shear said.

Whether it’s one animal, or sixty.

“None of these animals did anything wrong,” Shear said. “It is our mission to help animals wherever they are. Not only me, but the staff and volunteers rally around when there is this amount of animals and they are happy to do it because that’s why they are here. That’s why we are all here.”

The animals will be available for adoption beginning on Friday.