Our cheeky pet cockatoo morphed into a little dictator. Then the war began | Gabrielle Chan

He mustered us like a cattle dog, dive-bombed like a magpie, clamped his jaw around body parts and leered at us through windows. I felt like Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock's The Birds

Vote now in the Guardian/BirdLife Australia 2021 bird of the year poll

He came to us in exchange for a case of beer. A white sulphur-crested cockatoo of indeterminate age but full of chutzpah. He had lived the childhoods of the neighbouring farm kids and now he would entertain us.

That neighbour really saw me coming.