Myths and Legends

How Kiwi lost his wings

Centuries ago, when the world was only filled with animals, the Kiwi had beautiful wings. There were other animals such as the lion, snake, monkey and the elephant and they were the same as today.

These animals had individual gardens filled with lots of yummy and brightly coloured food. They each looked after their garden every day. The Kiwi on the other hand, had no garden because he was too lazy to look after it. So instead he stole food from the others.

One rainy day when everybody was still sleeping, Kiwi came to monkey’s garden. Monkey’s garden was filled with lots of yummy treats. Kiwi sneaked across monkey’s garden and snipped off all the crops and placed it in his bag.

When monkey discovered this, he was shocked and he called all the other animals together. They planned what they would do. They thought of a very clever plan; to make a wire trap each to put in each garden and wait to see which garden kiwi would show up in.

The next night kiwi began his robbery. Snake spotted kiwi trotting along the ground towards his house! As quick as a flash, he dropped the wire trap from the tree on top of kiwi. WOOSSSHHH! Down it went.

When all the animals gathered around kiwi, to see what had happened, Kiwi cried “ow, ow!” The animals looked carefully and saw that kiwi’s wings were caught. They didn’t mean for this to happen. So they helped kiwi. They pulled and pulled for an hour. Finally WIISSSHHH, all the animals including kiwi tumbled back and flew across the ground. They all looked at poor kiwi. Although he was free, sadly his wings weren’t there.

Kiwi was sad and waited for his wings to grow back but they never really did. So from that day onwards he never ever stole again and all kiwis have no wings.

By Isabeau