Sideswipe: October 21: Wet, wētā, wettest

"The luckiest wētā in Auckland."

"This would have to be the luckiest wētā in Auckland," writes John Pirtle of Blockhouse Bay. "My wife had just put a full load of washing through the machine and was unloading it when the wētā got unloaded as well!

"After taking his picture for posterity, took him out, popped him onto a bush in the garden and five minutes later he was gone, clean as the proverbial whistle."

X-ray vision of accident

Bruce Webber of Sandringham writes: "Many years ago I worked at Green Lane Hospital when it was a hospital and had an accident and emergency department. For morning tea the radiographers used to sit outside the A&E department facing the road soaking up the sun.

"One day my boss caught a taxi from the hospital front entrance and as the driver approached the road, he became unconscious (some medical reason), travelled across the road missing all the cars and hit the stone wall on the opposite side of the road.

"Hearing the sound of the accident my friend rushed to the scene, opened the passenger door, saw the boss and said 'you got here quick', slammed the door and went to give assistance to the driver.

"The driver was charged with a driving offence. The prosecutor asked my boss the question: 'Did the driver use his brakes?' He refused to answer the question with yes or no as the driver was unconscious!"

Baby grands are child's play.

Unwinnable arguments

1. My co-worker thinks that police radar guns work by scanning cars to see how hot their engine is ... because the faster you go, the hotter it will be, right? I tried explaining how Doppler radar works but she remains convinced that she's correct, because, and I quote: "My husband has one of those radar guns and uses it when he's cooking on the grill." Your husband has an infrared thermometer, you nutbar.

2. A guy argued that a "baby grand" piano was for little children during their earliest piano lessons, saying "that's why they're called baby grands". I explained that the term "baby grand" simply refers to the smallest size of a grand piano, about 1.3m long. He insisted that baby grands were for little children, and that's why they're called "baby grands".

3. When I was 18 I had a girl try to tell me that all the bakeries in my country were actually owned by one company that was controlled by the Government (I lived in Australia). When I pointed out to her that I was doing a bakery apprenticeship at the time and that my family had been in the industry for more than three generations and no less that six members of my extended family owned bakeries, she looked me in the eyes and said: "Well, I'm sorry to burst your little bubble ..."