Monday, September 12, 2011

The Kiwis are coming!!!


Dear Grammar Gang devotees

Advance notice that a Kiwi will be landing in our Helpnest logo very soon!

You may be interested to know that New Zealand's famous national symbol and extremely cute bird, has three surviving species but is now sadly endangered due to habitat destruction and the introduction of the possum to New Zealand!

Some interesting facts: a kiwi is the size of a chicken, its egg is very large for a bird its size and kiwis are nocturnal, surviving on worms which they forage for at night.

Watch out for our new logo, which welcomes our New Zealand colleagues from Massey University to the Helpnest.

Susanna

1 comment:

Lisa said...

Thank you for this post - for us kiwis it's important to note that we are named after a bird, not a fruit. Not long ago, I was in the US and standing in a Starbucks queue (sorry - we're talking about the States - line) and I listened in to this conversation where one person was telling another about their trip to NZ. In amongst their discussions of the scenery and the people, I listened with interest to this bit of dialogue:

Person A: "And it's strange, the people in NZ refer to themselves as kiwis".

Person B: "why would they call themselves after a fruit?"

Person A: "yes, it's strange."

Person B: "I think there is a bird called a kiwi."

Person A: "yes, that's right. And it kind of looks like the outside skin of kiwi."

Person B: "mmm....so maybe the bird is named after the fruit, and then they name themselves after them both?".

Only great restraint on my part stopped me from tapping them on the shoulder and explaining.....

Lisa