The pet I’ll never forget: Coffee the bloodied cockatoo – who rescued me as much as I rescued her

We call her Coffee Saint Clair.

She arrived one morning in 2020 as we were eating chocolate eclairs outside on our decking. We live in the “border zone” in New South Wales, a Unesco World Heritage area of forests and pockets of suburbia. The wildfires that ravaged more than 200,000 sq km of Australia had finally stopped burning and we were trying to pretend everything was back to normal.

She was injured, her feathers bloodied. As I approached, she flew up into a eucalypt tree nearby. Biologists think birds know they are smarter than humans for some things, but also understand that humans can do things they can’t. She knew she needed help.

“Just catch her with a towel and bring her in,” our local vet advised, knowing that I was a registered animal carer.

Over the next few days, I tried. Again and again for days, fluffy towel took off, flying through the air. Finally, one day I was successful.

At the clinic, the vet said she had probably been attacked by a neighbour’s cat. After treatment, and back home, we set her free. Her wings stretched wide, without a look back, she flew away.

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The next morning, she returned, looking through the window. And the next. Over the next few months, she would come each day to drink and eat before flying back to the forest.

“Where does all the sadness go after the fires?” some people ask. We try to live two parallel lives – one living our “old” lives and one trying to process all that pain. Where does it go? I think it goes into loving a small, injured bird, who turned to me when she was hurt.

For months, all I could think about was Coffee Saint Clair. It helped focus my mind.

Sometimes I think she is actually a reincarnated saint. So stoic and determined. There are some words that an Indian friend recites about the divine in nature: “Her being comprehends all space and time.” I think those words refer to my wild, feathered friend.

Now, it’s spring and temperatures are already over 30C. My partner says he can’t go through another fire: the stress, the smoke, the sadness. Should we move? To make matters worse, an airport has been built nearby from where planes will soon fly continually over this World Heritage area and its sandstone canyons. Soon the valleys will be filled with the noise of jet engines, not the screeching of cockatoos.

Cockatoos are adaptable – they survived when other species did not. But how much more can they take?

She still comes back to visit sometimes. And when she does, not often now, it’s as if she is saying: “I’m keeping an eye on you. Don’t even think about giving up.”