The bushfire crisis has also revealed our arbitrary relationship to animals based on the stories we tell about them. While we individually place food and water in our yards for displaced wildlife, injured cows are trucked to the slaughterhouse. As a society, we don’t mourn the loss of farmed animals. The momentum for their salvation is not the same as for wildlife – they are not valued simply for being who they are, but for the way they serve us. And when they cease to serve that function – when their udders stop producing, or they can no longer gain weight – we send them to the same fate we have just saved them from.