It’s been 10 days now since I last saw my old friend Jango. It’s time I faced the truth: he is either dead, or in prison. For his sake, I hope it is the former.

Jango first came into my life three years ago. He turned up on our lawn one day in spring, chewing – as galahs do – on the kikuyu stems. I knew immediately that he was different.

The other galahs flew away when I approached, but Jango continued chewing unperturbed. He let me come right up close.

I decided he must be someone’s escaped pet, and that he was probably hungry and at risk living in the wild. Even then I had a healthy respect for a galah’s beak, so I caught him carefully using an Akubra hat and a jacket.

We had an aviary sitting empty next to the shed, so we put him in there while we decided what to do with him. We fed him some parrot mix and asked around. No-one seemed to have lost a galah.

About the same time my daughter brought home a rescued rainbow lorikeet, which she called Boba, after the Star Wars bounty hunter. So the galah, naturally enough,  became Jango – although the two birds never got on.

Jango did not like captivity, and it upset all of us to see him sulking in the aviary. But we thought we were doing the right thing; that he would surely die if we let him go.

We brought him inside sometimes, to give him something to do and space to fly around in. Often during the day we would also bring him out of his aviary to a smaller cage on our verandah, where he could see what was going on and not be so lonely. We brought him toys – sticks, flowers, gum nuts and the like – which he chewed relentlessly. But you only had to look at him in the cage to know he wasn’t happy.

Then one day, after about a month, one of my sons – Max – was transferring Jango from the aviary to his verandah cage when he accidentally let him go. Jango flew into the tree-tops and wouldn’t come down. That, we decided, was that.

But just to be sure we left some food in his verandah cage, in case he got hungry. Apparently he did; he flew down a couple of days later and helped himself to the seed. We let him be, and didn’t try to catch him again.

“we moved his food bowl to the top of his old verandah cage”

It quickly turned into a routine – we moved his food bowl to the top of his old verandah cage, and he would fly down a couple of times a day for us to feed him. Over time, the relationship developed.

At first Jango really only trusted Max. He distrusted me most of all. We joked at the time that this was because Max had been the one to let him go, while I had been the one who put him in the cage. Ha ha. Three years on I now think that was probably the truth; we learned that Jango was a very smart bird, and he most certainly could tell human beings apart.

“A boy and his bird”

Jango became increasingly attached to Max. When Max walked outside, Jango would appear out of nowhere and land on his shoulder. Max could do anything with him – tickle him, tumble him over in his lap, take him for rides on his scooter. I would often come outside and find Max lying in the hammock on the verandah, with Jango in his lap. A boy and his bird. It was lovely to watch, but I admit I was a little jealous.

Because, as I said, Jango did not like me. If I came anywhere near him his crest would go up menacingly, and if I got within a metre or two he would fly at me squawking. He would let me feed him when he was hungry, but there were days when I was nervous about going outside because he was waiting to attack.

If ever I went outside with no shoes – to get the clothes off the line or something – Jango would land near my feet and attack my bare toes, viciously.

It took months to convince Jango to trust me. Max and the other three children were away during the day, and I was home working. So Jango and I saw a lot of each other, and more often than not I was the one feeding him.

Over time he conceded first to sit on my shoulder, then to let me pick him up. Gradually we grew close, Jango and I. Eventually I was almost as popular with him as Max was – although even after three years Jango would desert me and fly to Max if he had the chance.

It is a strange thing to be befriended by an individual from another species; it gave me extraordinary joy every time he chose to be with me. Sometimes it was just about food – I would feed him, and stand nearby while he ate so the other galahs or the bronzewing pigeons didn’t steal his food.

Sometimes, perhaps bizarrely, it was about sex. In spring Jango would get urges. He lusted after human hands: mine, my wife’s, Max’s – anyone’s.

If I walked outside at any time during the day it was no surprise to hear a sudden flap of wings, and Jango would land on my shoulder. I never knew before that galahs could purr, but Jango could. He would nibble at my ear, purr, and bob his head up and down. That was the standard Jango greeting. It was very hard not to bob your head back, and he always liked a good scratch.

But if it was spring, Jango’s purring and bobbing would inevitably lead to somethings else: his eyes would become transfixed on my hand, and he would start to sidle, ever so surreptitiously, down my arm. His lust was such that if I did not stop him – and he was not always easy to stop – he would start humping my hand, twisting his tail back and forth.

Poor Jango, his love affair with the human hand was un-requited. Often in spring if I was going somewhere in the car I would hear a soft ‘thud’ on the car roof just as I closed the door, then the scrabble of Jango’s claws as he scuttled across to a window. Jango’s head would appear upside down peering through the driver’s window or the windscreen, his eyes staring longingly at my hands on the wheel.

“Jango knew our family’s habits”

Jango knew our family’s habits, and how to get our attention. If he was hungry or lonely he would land on the kitchen window sill and tap persistently on the glass until someone went out to see what he wanted. It wasn’t always about food, or sex. Often it was just about company.

Sometimes Jango seemed to be bored, in search of excitement. He would demand to be brought  inside – either into the dining room or the office – where he would proceed to fly around until he could find something to wreck. He’d land on the backs of our dining room chairs and start chewing large splinters out of the wood, or strut up and down the kitchen sink picking up items with his beak and throwing them on the floor.

In the office Jango was really annoying. It was almost impossible to get any work done with him in the room. He would land on the back of my chair and rub himself up against my neck and face while I was working. Or he would attack my keyboard (and, of course, in spring he was irresistibly drawn to my hands as I typed). More than once I had to stop him as he started to rip individual keys out of the keyboard with his beak.

“There is a little pile of Jango’s dried leaves and twigs behind my keyboard as I type this”

If I got sick of him and put him out, he would march up and down outside the office window scratching at it and climbing up the flyscreen. Sometimes he would disappear for a while and re-appear holding a gum twig with a few leaves on it. He seemed to know I couldn’t resist a leafy twig, and would always let him back in if he had one. There is a little pile of Jango’s dried leaves and twigs behind my keyboard as I type this.

“When I worked outside Jango would often join me”

When I worked outside Jango would often join me, sitting on my shoulder, or on the grass or a perch nearby. His favourite thing was the clothes line. Sometimes on stinking hot days Jango would sit on the kids’ basketball hoop and we would squirt him with a hose to cool him down.

I learned a lot from Jango. I can never look at another bird, indeed another creature, the same way again. He was so clever, so much an individual, so obviously a conscious and feeling being. Somehow, across the huge divide which is the species barrier, we connected with each other. We got on. If two creatures from worlds as alien as Jango’s and mine can do that, surely there is hope that humans can reach across the much smaller gulfs which separate us. I won’t labour the point.

It was a funny sort of a relationship, which was always – on my part at least – tinged with concern. Because I knew every time I saw Jango it might be the last. I knew, and perhaps he did too, that the world out there is full of things that eat galahs, and of people (like me) who might want to put them in cages. I worried about that, a lot. So much so that I found someone on the internet who made parrot leg bands, and I got one made up for Jango with my phone number on it. I thought that way at least someone might ring me if they found him. No-one has.

For three years I spent time with Jango almost every day. The last time was one evening early last week, when Jango – who had been pestering our family all week with his spring time urges – turned up for a quick feed and a scratch before dark. Then he vanished, and I have not seen him again. I doubt now that I ever will.

I really hope he is dead, that it was quick, and that he is not trapped in a cage somewhere. I miss the little guy.

“two old men of the world”

My most treasured memories of Jango were the late afternoons in summer. I never did find out where he spent his nights – somewhere up in the gum trees about 100 metres from our house, I think.

But in the long summer evenings, as the heat went out of the day, Jango would sometimes come around and tap on the kitchen window. And I would go outside onto the verandah to sit with him and watch the sun set. Sometimes he would nibble my ear, or purr. Sometimes we would bob heads at each other, or I would scratch him.

But mostly we would just sit quietly together, two old men of the world, and watch the sun set behind the trees.