Claire Harvey: Pity the poor possum caught in the headlights

Possums are pure delight; lovely, furry, cuddly creatures with big, trusting brown eyes.

If you chop up some apples and bananas, and leave them out on a broad tree branch for the neighbourhood possums, as my family did in the evenings when I was growing up, they will hop down from the higher boughs at dusk, pick up the fruit in their dainty paws and nibble it, curling their brushy tails contentedly around the branch.

On tentative tiptoes, you might be lucky to sneak close enough to stroke their tiny ears and see them twitch those sweet little pink noses. The word "possum" is a term of tenderest endearment, whispered to lullabied babies in the twilight.

So stop running them over, you maniacs.

According to the Native Bird Recovery Centre at Whangarei, Kiwis (the human ones driving cars) have become so enthusiastic about flattening possums on the road that kiwis (the birds) are increasingly likely to become roadkill.

Apparently, horrified and repentant motorists frequently rush into animal rescue centres, cradling critical kiwis which have been scraped half-alive from the bitumen.

These specimens are the victims of mistaken identity - drivers have seen something small and brown on the road, assumed it was a possum, and revved up to squash it.

The kiwi-savers say this is a dreadful state of affairs.

Not the wanton bloodlust, but the fact that the occasional innocent kiwi is getting run over.

That is, the kiwi-lovers say it's terrible that some drivers don't check carefully to make sure the doomed possum in their headlights is actually a possum.

So it's fine to slaughter a possum if you see one sitting on the road, but if you mow down a kiwi you're liable to face criminal prosecution and a fine of up to $5000.

Sorry if this seems a rather repetitive statement of the bleeding obvious, but it seems New Zealand is possessed of an official and popular view that it is acceptable to deliberately run over a living creature, as long as it's not a brown bird which happens to have been here for a few centuries longer than the rest of the animal population.

For someone from a neighbouring country which harbours a certain fondness for possums (okay, Australia), this is a dark and disturbing discovery.

This is not about liking possums more than kiwis.

There's no doubt kiwis (the birds) are very nice little fellows.

They're native symbols, and a bit fragile and shy, and they have a valid claim to mollycoddling from blokes in khaki shorts.

Of course, kiwis are not as soft as possums, and they don't have paws or nice furry tails and they probably can't pick up banana segments with cunning dexterity, and they haven't got charming eyes, and you probably wouldn't call a baby "kiwi" instead of "darling" - but it's not a competition.

And there's nothing wrong with farmers and the Department of Conservation eradicating possums; no matter how likeable they may seem to some of us, possums have bred at such a furious rate that they are now a damaging pest in New Zealand.

It's clear these marsupials have not done a good PR job in their adopted home, for even the most green-hearted New Zealander appears to regard possums as faintly less appealing than, say, giant Madagascan hissing cockroaches.

Fair enough. Throughout Aotearoa, possums chomp through the bush with reckless disregard for the delicacy of this ecosystem, numbering more than 70 million and eating 7 million tonnes of vegetation each year.

The crown research institute AgResearch says possums have a "90 per cent occupancy rate", a figure which would make some inner-city Auckland landlords weep with jealousy. AgResearch says they cost $50 million a year in research, and spread tuberculosis to animals like sheep and cows (possums, not landlords).

And there's no objection to the use of their fur; it's undoubtedly warm and useful and obviously plentiful (although it would be nice, as the animal liberationists pointed out at Fashion Week, if they weren't allowed to bleed slowly and painfully to death in leg-traps).

Possum fur makes an attractive range of household furnishings, even if you do have to hide them when the relatives come visiting from Sydney.

So yes, the possums have to go.

But please, not like this.

None of the possums' acknowledged sins of birth and behaviour justify flattening the poor little bastards on State Highway 1.

It can't be good karma to deliberately run over anything, and the road toll won't be helped much by crazed quasi-environmentalists weaving across lanes to help the eradication effort.

You don't have to feed them apples and bananas if you don't want to. Just don't make them into pancakes. At least not when the tourists are looking.