The only possible explanation I can think of for my admiration of these flightless birds is that this is video games' fault. I am specifically blaming The New Zealand Story for the Sega Genesis**. The premise of the game is as follows: You are Tiki, a kiwi living a carefree life with all the other kiwis in your home on the North Island of New Zealand. One day, a walrus waddles into your village and kidnaps everyone, intent on sending you all to an evil walrus-run zoo. Somehow, you manage to escape, and you must chase the walrus all the way to the bottom of South Island to rescue all of your kiwi comrades. Also, you have a girlfriend named Phee-Phee.
It's a pretty fun game, and it involves some GTA-esque elements, like hijacking vehicles. Granted, those vehicles are hot-air balloons piloted by anthropomorphic cats who throw hatchets, but the idea is the same. The point is that the game is fun, and--since the main character is a kiwi on a morally righteous mission--it limns kiwis extremely positively. There is one major problem, however:
THIS IS NOT A KIWI.
Tiki (and all the other in-game kiwis) do not look like real kiwis. I am sure the game developers at Taito were aware of this, and had some motive for making their sprites look absolutely nothing like what they are supposed to represent. My working theory is that Taito was in league with the powerful Kiwi Lobbying Group, currently the only political machine to be comprised of flightless birds. The KLG knew that its members were ugly, and an accurate depiction of them in a video game would be less-than-stellar for their popularity in the always-critical youth market. Together, Taito and the KLG hatched a plan to convince the ignorant masses that kiwis were actually adorable yellow balls of fluff that fought evil monsters like walruses and aliens in order to keep the world safe.
YOUR SECRET IS OUT, KIWIS! I KNOW OF YOUR DECEITFUL PLAN! YOU CANNOT SILENCE ME, FOR YOUR PUNY, USELESS WINGS ARE INCAPABLE OF MANIPULATING COMPUTER EQUIPMENT! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
And that is why I love kiwi birds. Awww, it's so cute!
* This is not the real, appropriate plural for "apteryx," a word coming from the Greek "a-" and "pteryx," together meaning "no wing." The plural I used is a Latin plural, not a Greek one. If someone is able to decipher this chart, I'd replace it with the legitimate plural.
** There is an earlier version of TNZS, called Kiwi Kraze and released on the NES, but that one was pretty sucky and I didn't actually play it until after the Genesis version. I don't know why I bothered explaning this to you putzes.
