Unisex sweatshirt
This kakapo hoodie goes on over your head and that's it, and what's printed on it is Kiri, a character from my Animal Kinhood series, where animals dress and live like people. Kiri is a midwife on an island in southern New Zealand, has the mottled green plumage of her species, and, tied at her neck, a pink floral scarf.
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.
The pink floral scarf is the only spot of color in her whole wardrobe. It belonged to her sister Awhina, who died young, and Kiri has never said whose it was; nobody on the island has asked her twice. She ties it around her neck every day, including the days she's not going to see anyone, and in the portrait she wears it with the same knot she leaves the house with.
Kiri knows who's been in a room before she walks in, and knows if someone is sick before she touches them. She's never called that a sense of smell. She calls it having an eye for things, and it genuinely surprises her that others don't; she's come to think they're hiding it. The kakapo has a fairly famous smell of its own: the plumage gives off a sweet scent that observers compare to honey or the inside of a clarinet case. In a forest with no predators that was never a problem. And for Kiri, when someone gets too close, she doesn't need to ask who it is.
