On Being a Kiwi
April 5th, 2008 by Thomas Maresca
Seen on a Wellington bathroom wall:
I don’t know about you, but I am not a flightless, defenseless, half-blind bird with a really big nose.
I did manage to see a kiwi, in Otorohanga (“The Kiwiana Capital of New Zealand”) and they really are kind of ridiculous. Bigger than I’d expected, and round and silly-looking, a furry ball with a long beak. Not what you would call an impressive creature (although cute.)
It makes you wonder why a bird like this even exists.
The Maori have a good origin story. Tane Mahuta, the lord of the forest (and the name of the biggest kauri tree in NZ, in the Waipoua Forest), noticed that the bugs on the ground were eating roots and making the trees sick. So he asked for a bird to come down and live on the forest floor to eat the bugs. He asked the tui, the pukeko, and other native birds but all refused—too dark, too damp, too busy building their nests.
Finally, Tane Mahuta asked the kiwi, and the kiwi agreed. The lord of the forest warned that this would mean that the bird would lose his wings and beautiful feathers, but the kiwi still consented. For his noble sacrifice, Tane Mahuta promised that the kiwi would become the best-known and most-beloved bird in the land—which it certainly is, no matter what it says on the walls of Wellington.
One Response to “On Being a Kiwi”
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April 5th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Nice post. Not sure how authentic that origin story really is but you tied it all together very nicely…