HATCHED IN AN OVEN

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 174, 19 April 1929, Page 8

HATCHED IN AN OVEN

STORY OF A KIWI EGG Dominion Special Service. Auckland, April 18. Kiwis must have first seen the light in strange places, but a little fellow who has just arrived at Kawakawa is probably the only one who has been born in an oven—not an incubator, but a plain everyday kitchen oven. It happened quite accidentally. One day a Maori boy arrived in the township with a kiwi’s egg. - It lay outside all Saturday night and part of Sunday morning, when it was shown to Mr. G. Wilson, the postmaster. It was the first he had ever seen. As soon as he handled it he knew there was life inside, and he suggested that it be handed over to him. This was agreed to. After being warmed in the oven for two hours, the shell was broken by Mr. Wilson sufficiently to let the inmate get its little beak through. Gradually he loosed his body, until at , the end of six hours there emerged a tiny ’kiwi. 1 All the operations took place in the oven, and naturally Mr. Wilson had to watch the temperature very, closely. At first the little fellow was not too safe on his pins, but he soon improved. He was fed on a diet of yolk of egg, and later he developed an appetite quite out of proportion to his size. “We have to keep the doors shut, wrote Mr. Wilson to the curator of the Auckland Zoo, “as he hangs round and hops up flights of steps and makes straight into the kitchen. He is very hungry, for ever looking for food, and willing to eat breadcrumbs and anything he cad find on the kitchen floor. He is getting, /quite knowing, and very intelligent. Most peculiar of all he never drinks. When six weeks old he was quite strong and able to sleep out. He has departed from the natural ways of the kiwi, and hunts by day and sleeps by night. Immediately he sees a human being he starts pecking them to let them know he requires more worms. Where he stows them all goodness only knows but he never says he has had enough. Immediately after a good feed he simply buries his head and falls off .to sleep, generally for about two hours and then out he goes hunting again.” As the kiwi is protected and no one is allowed to take one or keep one in captivity, permission of the Minister of Internal Affairs is to be asked, in order that this interesting little foundling may be presented .to the Auckland Zoo. "