Heirloom kiwi returns after 45 years away
Okoki the kiwi has come home. After 45 years gathering dust in a school up north the stuffed brown female kiwi was collected by the Department of Conservation (DOC) and brought back to Taranaki.
‘‘We sort of regard it our kiwi,’’ 93-year-old former owner Owen Henry said.
This kiwi has quite a story. It begins in 1930 when one of Owen’s relations worked a quarry near Okoki where the bird was found, after it had been supposedly attacked by a dog.
Owen suspects that wasn’t quite the case given the state of the bird’s plumage.
‘‘I believe that that was a coverup story because even in those days it was a fairly touchy subject and now days if you did it and it was discovered you’d be up in the court and probably do clink,’’ he said.
His father’s cousin, Bob Poole, stuffed the kiwi, but after Poole died suddenly a few years later it fell into the hands of Owen’s father.
When Owen took over the family farm in Okoki, he inherited the kiwi.
‘‘My wife had an old-fashioned superstition about having feathers in the house; it was unlucky,’’ he said.
When he got the kiwi out she’d ask him to put it away quicksmart.
During his younger years Owen and then his son Ross in the 70s were boarders at a school in the Auckland area, which he does not wish to name.
‘‘I decided that the kiwi was living rather a useless life so I would present it to the school,’’ he said.
‘‘My instructions were that it was to go into glass as protection and it was to go in a prominent place where generations of boys could see what a genuine kiwi looked like.’’
This didn’t happen and a disappointed Owen thought he’d never see it again.
Several months ago Hospice Taranaki tried to auction a mounted kiwi and DOC stepped in.
‘‘When I read this in the paper it called to mind what I regarded as our kiwi. I went to DOC and told them.’’
Now the school has released the kiwi and it’s back in Taranaki and DOC has yet to decide where it should go on display.
‘‘I hope it stays in Taranaki,’’ Owen said.