Giant Weta eaten news coverage in Dominion Post

COMING face to face with a Weta for the first time is perhaps an enduring memory for many travellers to New Zealand. The collosal insects have long rod like tentacles, spiny legs, a jurassic brown and amber camoflauge and are fond of turning up on dark nights in bedrooms or, in your hair after a walk between trees.

Imagine a russet and blood-brown giant grasshopper wearing a full-face motorcycle helmet, with oversized deely boppers and you'll be getting something close to the B-grade image you need to avoid.

But though these insects are a howl-inducing shock when you find one clining to your clothes, they are otherwise harmless and fascinating creatures. New Zealanders are fond of creating little homes out of hollowed out tree trunks and calling them, charmingly, Weta Hotels.

But in a world of economic meltdown, climate change, Afghan warfare and flu pandemics, they are not, I suggest, front page news, and certainly not on a Sunday broadsheet. One could imagine the small and exciting trade publication, Insect World, plastering a full page spread of one of these animals for a monthly issue, but that's where it ends.

So imagine my surprie when this weekend's Dominion Post featured a front page article about how one happless giant Weta had been eaten by an eel. Discovered it seems, because the Weta had been attached to a wireless transmitter which, like its tastier symbiote, had ended up in the eel's stomach.

I'm all in favour of the humerous item at the end of the TV news, or in the readers' letters, or even a feature buried in the "life" section, and it's great the country has so little nastiness going on to report, but this strikes me as a dereliction of duty.

What was the editor thinking? If he wanted to create the impression of an isolated, out of touch, insular publication with nothing to say, he could scarcely have done a better job.

I love Wetas. I love Weta hotels. But I'd also really like to read a decent weekend paper, and it's one of the things I sorely miss about living in New Zealand.

• The full weta mouthful here