Borneo, 1 Nov 2006 --
Please allow me a minute to describe the many ways in which leeches suck (ha ha ha… sorry).
During our trip to Malaysia, Andris and I encountered three different types of leeches: the little sock-penetrating leeches of Taman Negara, the big friendly leeches of Borneo, and the tiger leech, also of Borneo, which has a painful bite and enjoys doing it’s hitch-hiker dance from leaves above the ground.
For those never lucky enough to have had many interactions with these type of leeches, let me describe their appearance and behavior. The leeches we met were either solid black, brown, or dark red, with the exception of the tiger leeches which were black with white/green stripes. The smallest one we encountered was about half an inch long, and the longest was about 4-5 inches. They are very thin when you first meet them, though they can be quite fat when they finally abandon you. The leeches have a mean sucker mouth at one end, and what I will call the “wiggly” end at the other.
What a leech does when I am not around I do not know, but once they hear us coming ( I believe they can sense the vibrations in the ground) they affix their sucker end to a leaf that is either on the ground or, in the case of tiger leeches, anywhere. They stick their wiggly end up in the air and either stick straight up, or madly, blindly, flail around looking for prey, which is what I call the “hitch-hiker dance.” (I think it looks like they are screaming “pick me up! pick me up! I want to come with you!”) The movement of the hitch-hiker dance is alien and disturbing, and after several hours of hiking through leech-infested jungle your eyes become keen to detect it. When you put your foot down in any proximity to a leech, it will “sense” the presence of a big sack of blood and quickly start heading towards you, moving like an inchworm. When it reaches you, it will grab on to your shoe or clothing with the wiggly end, and then inch along you until it finds flesh. If you happen to notice it, you can usually flick it off. The bigger leeches are very strong and flicking doesn’t work, so you can grab the wiggly end and yank. It will then affix itself to your finger, and then you can quickly scrape it off with a branch or something.
If a leech is lucky enough to find flesh, it will put a little bit of anaesthetic and some some anti-coagulant on your skin and then bite a hole in you. When it is full, it will let go and leave you with a freely bleeding wound. When I got a leech in my sock, someone lent me some liquid band aid which completely failed to stop the bleeding. When a leech got in Andris’ pants (through the hole where the zipper is for his zip-off pant legs) he didn’t notice until the guide pointed out that there was a big blood stain on the back of his pants.
However, it is not as bad as it sounds. Leeches do not carry diseases, and eventually the wounds heal. I think that when you hike in the jungle you go through various stages of leech acceptance. At first they are disgusting and incredibly scary. Eventually you realize they are just animals doing their thing, albeit an evil thing. Then, if you are me, you start tempting them onto sticks and rocks and throwing them into the woods rather than running away screaming. If you are our guide (who must be at a very advanced stage of leech acceptance) you allow them to attach, but then kill them via bug spray, salt, or fire.
In conclusion, I don’t like leeches, but I prefer them to sea cucumbers.
Categories Malaysia
November 1st, 2006 at 11:20 am
I was listening to NPR last night and a guy was discussing the use of leeches and other creepy-crawlies in medicine. apprently the FDA has decided to treat the them as “medical devices,” and give doctors the thumbs up on their use. they’re becoming increasingly popular in plastic and reattachment surgeries. they make the blood flow and such, which convinces the reattached body part to stay. And all that, naturally. Neat, no?
then he started talking about the benefits of maggots in medical practice. So i turned off the radio.