Tote bag
A kakapo tote bag, made of cotton, with the portrait of Kiri printed on it. Kiri is a character from my Animal Kinhood series, where animals dress and live like people: a middle-aged kakapo, with a direct expression and no smile. It does what bags are for, which is carrying things from one place to another.
Foto: Dianne Mason / Department of Conservation NZ (CC BY 2.0)Strigops habroptila
It doesn't have to be tonight. Just say the word.
Temperate rainforest in New Zealand. Today it survives only on predator-free sanctuary islands — Whenua Hou, Pukenui/Anchor and Hauturu — plus one fenced mainland enclosure.
In her story, the bag she works with belonged to her mother. The handle is worn down to the weave and it's missing two clasps, and she won't replace it. Every week she empties it completely and goes through it: boil, dry, put away, and back into the case. It's been two years since she last opened it to work. She checks it just the same. If you ask her why, she answers that it's about keeping things in their place, and that's where the conversation ends.
She keeps the people's birth register herself, in a hardback notebook with no elastic band to close it. One page per year, and a fair few pages without a single line. None of those pages is an oversight. They're the years nobody was born on the island: the kakapo only breeds when the rimu fruits, every two to four years, and in the years between the birth count is zero. Kiri writes the year at the top, checks there's nothing to record, and turns to the next one.
