On a side note, while I was biking the Heaphy, a guy from Wellington told me how to cook them. He said, put a rock and a bird in a pot of boiling water. Then remove the bird and eat the rock. So I guess they'd taste bad enough to make a NZ'er angry (on top of making NZ'ers angry because killing one would be of emotional significance).
I mean.... I said bird in my story 2 times, only after you put up a wikipedia page about the bird, and you somehow got that I wasn't talking about a bird.