A pink cockatoo with white head feathers perches indoors, near a brown dog on a cushioned pet bed under natural daylight. 3:09
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Dog grins when his lost cockatoo comes home

Milo was out on a walk with Charlotte's dad when they found an injured bird. It was a galah cockatoo with a broken wing, and he came home with them. more

The cockatoo, Cracker, was shaken up by whatever had happened to him. Because of the wing, he spent most of his time in a cage. Milo sat by his side all day long.

A pink cockatoo with a white head perches inside a cage, one eye visible and its beak slightly open. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Cracker heals in a cage at first, and Milo sits close by.

As the wing healed and Cracker could fly again, Charlotte began leaving him on top of the cage so he could be free. He never left. He started climbing down to the bottom of the cage to sit next to Milo, who stayed just outside and tried to lick him.

One day the family let Cracker climb all the way down, just to see what would happen. Milo was all excited, his tail going, and he followed the bird around the living room. That was the start of it. Now Cracker screams whenever Milo walks out of sight.

Milo's idea of a cuddle looks a lot like squashing. Charlotte sometimes wonders if she should step in. Then she looks at Cracker. "He just doesn't care," she says. "He'll go straight back."

Cracker is the pest of the pair. Milo settles into the bigger bed, and Cracker, who likes to get right up in your personal space, sits down beside him. Milo gets annoyed and moves to the other bed. Cracker follows him and sits there too. Then Milo changes beds again, and so does Cracker.

One morning Cracker flew off. It felt bittersweet, Charlotte says. They wanted him to be free, but he had become part of the family. Milo was really upset. He cried and kept looking into the cage and finding it empty.

Two weeks went by. Then a Facebook post turned up about a galah found two suburbs over, and Charlotte thought it was too good to be true. She was nervous when they brought the bird home, because she wanted so badly for it to be him.

It was. She was happy and in shock at once. Hardly anyone finds a lost bird after two weeks, she says, let alone the one who made friends with her dog. Milo wouldn't stop smiling, ear to ear.

A pink cockatoo with white head feathers perches indoors, near a brown dog on a cushioned pet bed under natural daylight. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Milo was out on a walk with Charlotte's dad when they found an injured bird.

Charlotte can't imagine them apart now. "They're like two peas in a pod," she says. "When you find one, you'll find the other."

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