Not Your Average Fauna

Last week, I found myself in a very familiar situation; standing at the front of my classroom, taking the roll and getting ready to teach the day's lesson. A very normal, average afternoon.

Slowly the situation unravelled. It started with a small tickle just above my ankle.

'Hm, must be my pant leg. I haven't shaved my legs in a while so that must be it,' I thought.

While some, maybe most of you are probably focusing on the shaved legs part, simply put that aside and let the story flow. Chalk up that tiny bit of information you didn't need to my cycling weirdness.

The tickle came again. Only this time it was just below my knee.

'Still just my pant leg. It must be. There's no other explanation.'

I quickly learned that a tickle in the pantleg in Canada is not the same as a tickle in the pantleg in New Zealand.

Suddenly, I had to supress the urge to laugh because the tickle was now crawling up my thigh, and while this is not funny for a few reasons, including the direction this tickle was heading in, I am extremely ticklish.

'This is NOT my pantleg.'

I slapped my hand down on the last tickle spot only to feel an insecty-like thing crawling between my leg and my pants. I immediately dropped everything I was holding and bolted from the room. Now I'm running to the bathroom and at the same time unbuckling my belt, not caring who I ran down along the way. As I'm running and unbuckling, I also managed to keep swiping and swatting at the tickle as it climbed my thigh. Now remember, I live in New Zealand, land of the harmless fauna. Imagine my reaction if I was living in Australia.

This part of the story needs a bit of setting up. The bathrooms are outfitted with a main door (that has a glass window) that leads to a foyer-type area. From that area there are two doors, one leading to the female bathroom and one leading to the male bathroom.

I slid to a stop at the main door, unlocked it, jumped in the foyer area and ripped my pants off. I threw them in the corner and started poking at them to see if there really was something crawling up my leg, or if I had finally completely lost my mind. Just then I heard the lock behind me. I turned around and came face to face with my department head. There I am in my underwear staring my boss in the eyes.

I jumped behind the men's bathroom door and said, "Sorry, there was something crawling up my leg."

To which she replied, "Oh, it's a Weta. I think you've hurt it."

"A what?!"

"A Weta. They're a sacred insect and endangered. There not to be killed. But it looks like its already half dead. Did you try to kill it or something?"

"Well, yeah, I was swatting at the unknown thing crawling up the inside of my pantleg."

"Well you should probably finish it off seeing as its already hurt."

"Um, did I leave my keys in the lock?"

"Yes, here you go."

Then I laughed. Put my Weta free pants back on. And finished off the insect. I hope they don't deport me.

A colleague later told me that he's been living here his entire life, 30 years, and has never even heard of that happening to anyone, which leads me to believe there are only two conclusions:
(A) I'm the chosen one to save the Weta species
or (B) I should leave this place immediately and never come back.

Many of you are probably now wondering what exactly a Weta is. Well, click here for a photo answer. Thankfully the one crawling up my leg wasn't nearly that big.