The original rat of New Zealand arrived with the first Polynesian settlers, travelling across the Pacific in the holds of waka. It is smaller than the ship rat and the Norway rat, with a more slender body and larger ears. The colour is a warm, reddish-brown on the back, with a lighter belly. These animals are the ancient invader. They spread across New Zealand ahead of the humans, reaching every corner of the forest. They ate the eggs and chicks of native birds, the seeds of native plants and the insects that lived in the leaf litter. The damage was immediate, but it was nothing compared to what came later. Kiore hold a complicated place in New Zealand history. They arrived with Māori and were valued as a food source. Their skins were used for clothing, and their presence was a sign of human settlement. But they were also a pest, eating food stores and damaging crops. To see a kiore is to see history. A small, reddish rat that arrived in the waka, that fed the first settlers, that helped shape the forest we see today. The kiore's decline is a story of being outcompeted by worse invaders. When ship rats and Norway rats arrived with Europeans, they were larger, more aggressive, and better at surviving in cold climates. The kiore retreated. Today, it survives mainly on offshore islands where the bigger rats have not yet reached. On those islands, it is still a pest, eating the eggs of nesting seabirds and the seeds of native trees. But it is also a part of the ecosystem now, a living link to the first human arrival in New Zealand. The kiore is both invader and native, pest and taonga. It does not fit neatly into any category, and that is exactly why it matters.