It was a Saturday like any other, or so I thought. The rich aroma of my personal slow sun roasted blend of Arabica coffee mildly cut with lightly roasted coca and a hint of fresh vanilla pod was spilling into my office from the stove top percolator in the kitchen. Breathing the pleasant homily smell deeply through my nose as I got up from the desk to pour the finished artesian brew and turn off the gas burner. I check the calendar of jobs in the kitchen, 'nothing booked for today, excellent. I'll have time to tend to my dwarfed coffee and coca trees in the green house' I say to the stud and plaster walls of my lonely remote two bedroom country home. The magpie sitting in the kitchen window turns her head to the side as if to ask "you loosing your mind talking to yourself there friend?" then hops threw the opening onto my bench to peck at the container of homemade crow feed, a mixture of rabbit jerky mixed nuts and dried fruit.
"no I'm not loosing my mind, Katie. just thinking out loud to you" I replied to the inquisitive bird while filling a small stainless steel dog bowl with the feed I make for her. As per our usual ritual I take a small handful of the surprisingly tasty, human safe bird feed and eat it infront of Katie just as I did with the strips of venison jerky I fed her the first day we met.

Thinking back to that day I found her trapped in a live box cage rodent trap left behind by the previous owner. Half starved and bearly just a fledgling the spirited young magpie still had plenty enough fight to peck a few scars into my hands as I rescued her. It took a couple of days but eventually I got her trusting me enough to eat drink and check her over for injuries. She was lucky enough to only have her flight fethers shaved off by the chicken wire used to make the trap and after a few weeks she was flying again. Happy tears flooded my eyes that day seeing her take flight into the hemlock pine in the rabbit infested paddock across from my kitchen window. It was only a week later she returned the favor and rescued me. It was my own stupidity, half way up a Radiatis pruning off some soon to be hazardous branches in all the wrong gear for the job. My sneaker laces come undone and tangle, one hand keeping hold of the tree and the other keeping the chainsaw away from my face I was stranded without a human soul for miles and no cell phone reception to call for help. Katie lands just inches from my face head cocked to one side and an aura that seemed to say "oh alright I'll help you, idiot!" before pecking through the laces cutting my feet free.

Katie sits over the cheep 70s style kitchen table on the back of ugly lino upholstered metal backed chair, nodding to the equally faded and ugly chair opersite her as if telling me to sit with my own breakfast of coffee cigarette and handful of bird feed. You would be forgiven for thinking my wild friend was part human with the body language communication she uses.

Just as I finish lighting my first cigarette of the day when the damn satellite phone rings. Katie squawks in frustration with a tone that suggested she was trying to say "that better be...