06/10/2026
So well written and so true, sending strength to all volunteers and carers your amazing👏🏻🦋
What It Costs to Care
They call us carers.
First responders.
Volunteers.
As though those words could ever explain
what it costs to answer the phone.
It costs fuel.
Milk.
Medicine.
Bandages and bedding.
Kilometres on cars already falling apart.
Vet bills we cannot afford
for animals that were never ours
until the moment somebody called.
But money is the cheapest part.
It costs dinners left cold on the table.
Birthdays arrived at late.
Plans cancelled.
Children who learn that Mum might have to leave
when the rescue phone rings.
It costs sleep.
Two a.m. feeds.
Midnight rescues.
Driving dark country roads
looking for eyes in the headlights,
knowing that somewhere ahead
something is hurting.
It costs pieces of your family life
you don’t get to ask for back.
It costs relationships with people
who don’t understand why
“just one animal”
couldn’t wait until morning.
Because we know why.
We have seen what morning can mean.
It costs the memory
of every animal we couldn’t save.
The ones that died in our arms.
The ones we found too late.
The mothers on the roadside
with babies still alive in their pouches.
The tiny bodies we carried home
already knowing how the story would end.
We remember them.
Every single one takes something with them.
And then the next phone call comes.
So we wipe our faces.
Wash the blood from our hands.
Change the bedding.
Warm another bottle.
Start the car.
And go.
People tell us,
“I could never do what you do.”
Sometimes we wonder
how much longer we can either.
Because compassion has a cost.
It is paid in exhaustion.
In missed moments.
In empty bank accounts.
In grief swallowed quietly
because another animal still needs feeding.
It is paid in pieces of ourselves.
Until some days
you reach inside
and wonder how there can possibly
be anything left to give.
And still—
a frightened animal settles against your chest.
A joey takes its first bottle.
An animal you were told wouldn’t survive
takes one more breath,
then another.
A cage door opens
and something you fought for
runs, climbs or flies back
to where it belongs.
And for one beautiful moment
the weight lifts.
That is why we answer.
Not because it doesn’t cost us.
But because somewhere
on the side of a road,
caught in a fence,
or lying beneath a tree,
a life is waiting
for someone to come.
And we know what it costs
to be that someone.
We also know
what it would cost us
to turn away.
Tennille Bankes
