Sunday, November 6, 2011

The bird came first

One of the most surprising discoveries we – or perhaps just I – have made, on moving to this large land mass, is that other people in the world don’t know what a kiwi (bird) is.  We kiwis find so much of our identity in that little fluffy guy who has a nocturnal nature, a long beak, and a lack of flight and site, that we assumed he was well known.  He’s not! 

I remember feeling such a strong sense of indignation when a character in book asked her mother to pass her a kiwi that I considered writing to the author and telling her she’d left a word out, it’s a kiwi fruit.  I think I was eight.  It didn’t occur to me that nothing else was called a kiwi in their world so they didn’t need to distinguish between the bird and the fruit.

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