Happy Waitangi Day, Kiwis and Pals! 🐹 ❤️ 💙 🤍 🥝 🥝 🥝 🥕

Happy Waitangi Day, New Zealanders!

If ever there were two creatures destined to nod at each other across ancestral hemispheres, it’s the kiwi and the guinea pig — both proudly ground-level, pleasantly round, and equipped with a very respectable wobble.

Now resident in the same territory as New Zealand guinea pigs proudly call themselves Kee-wheeks, they share some similar traits.

They’re both largely crepuscular (the elegant word for “most active at dawn and dusk,” as this is when the lighting is flattering and no one expects cardio).

The kiwi, native only to New Zealand, heads out at twilight, probing the forest floor with that remarkable long beak and issuing its famous high, piercing whistle — the male’s call ringing out as a dramatic “kee-wee!” that can carry impressively far through the bush.

A group of kiwis is called a tribe — though in fairness, they’re usually solitary and probably prefer committee meetings to be brief, as do we all.

Meanwhile, the guinea pig, whose ancestors hail from the Andes of South America, answers any mysterious forest whistle with an enthusiastic wheek — a bright, urgent broadcast that salad may be forthcoming.

One lays eggs. One prefers parsley.

And both have mastered the art of looking slightly spherical while aspiring to be aerodynamic. 🤪

Wheek! Wheek!