Firefighters are often called to rescue pets stuck up trees. Rarely is the pet needing help a bird.
Yet that is exactly what firefighters in the regional Victorian town of Maldon, south-west of Bendigo, were called to on Sunday.
Bruce is a two-year-old blue-and-yellow macaw that lives with his doting owner Miletta Lee.
Each night, he is put away in a sleeping cage with "his fiance" Brenda, another macaw, and Bird, a native cockatoo.
The trio are a regular fixture at Ms Lee's fish and chip shop, with Bruce considered something of a local celebrity.
But calamity struck late on Saturday night.
Ms Lee saw Bird perched at her back door and realised the trio's cage door must have been left open.
She sprinted out the screen door and into the backyard. Her worst fears had come true.
Bruce the macaw had escaped.
Looking to the sky to save me
The problem Bruce faced was that, as a young bird hand-raised by humans, he was still learning to fly.
He had conquered the art of ascent, but had yet to move onto how to descend.
So when Ms Lee saw the young bird perched at the top of a 22-metre high gumtree, her stomach was tied in knots.
"My heart just sank," Ms Lee said.
"We got a big ladder out and thought we could try and get him from that [but] it wasn't quite big enough."
Bruce refused to come down. He was paralysed with fear, his owner said.
There was nothing more they could do and night was quickly approaching.
Ms Lee and her partner waited anxiously through Saturday night, with plans to try again the next morning.
They headed outside when the sun rose and saw to their horror that Bruce was not in the same tree.
He had instead flown into a taller tree nearby — the tallest tree in town.
"He was too scared to fly to us. And he was just too scared to move or to climb down," Ms Lee said.
Calling Fireman Sam — literally
Maldon's local fire captain saw the debacle unfolding on social media and decided to call in the team at Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV) to help.
After some careful coordinating, an FRV truck was able to sneak into place and raise its 37-metre-high bucket to try and coax Bruce down.
It was up to Ms Lee to hop in with a fireman by the name of Sam, who agreed to help her with her mission.
The only problem was that Bruce is not the only one who is not so good with heights.
"I'm actually petrified of heights," Ms Lee said.
"I had to have my kids stop a carnival ferris wheel once on the peninsula because I was so scared."
But she put her fears aside, clung on for dear life, and went up to see her very nervous bird.
After the offer of a handful of cashews, a tentative Bruce edged close enough for Ms Lee to wrap his claw onto her hand.
She pounced on the flightless bird, wrapping him in a towel as, covered with sweat, the macaw fretted throughout his manual machine-assisted descent.
Ms Lee said she felt quite sheepish about the whole event, but was relieved to have her feathered friend back on solid ground — and in a securely locked cage.
"I wouldn't go as far as saying he was being naughty, I was the naughty one," Ms Lee said.
"I'm just so thankful to have him back."
Bruce is expected to start lessons in descent flying in a controlled environment soon.
