The leech story.
I feel like this, this story, is the entire reason I made this section of my blog, well that and to discuss Japanese cities and their treasures that I become acquainted with...which I am not doing such a good job of...
Anyways, as I may have mentioned in the Rafflesia post, I went hiking through a forest to find this rare and elusive flower. And one of the things you need to be exceptionally wary of, is leeches. I was wearing pants that cinched around the ankles, but alas, it was to no avail.
My partner was never once bit, because he said that he could feel them. They felt cool and water like to him he said. And he could always catch them the moment they started crawling up his skin.
So a thing or two about leeches.
They have an anti-coagulant in their bite. This means that your blood will keep flowing into their bodies and if you knock them off, it will just flow all over.
Unless you are pretty sensitive, you probably won't feel them. They feel just like the wet leaves of their surroundings, and once they attach themselves and start the blood works, you don't feel them there either because only their mouth is attached to your skin. They sort of hunch themselves and touch you as minimally as possible.
Do not put salt on them like you would a slug. This will achieve nothing. They will spit their blood back out and flail around and probably open you a new hole (to suck out of). You might think that this will force them to release their coagulating agent that they disperse when they are finished feeding. But that isn't the case either.
Just let them feed. When they are done, they will release the coagulating agent and fall off.
Otherwise, if you knock them off, you could bleed for days. You have to get something to stopper the blood. And let me tell you, band-aids won't cut it. What does stopper the blood is newspaper. When newspaper gets wet and and is allowed to sun-bake, it dries. But tissue paper takes much longer to dry. The dryness of the newspaper helps to stopper the blood a bit. it will absorb the blood, stick to the skin, and dry that way. But be warned. if you remove the newspaper, it will start bleeding again.
These bites don't leave scars and will be gone in about a week.
Anyways, as I may have mentioned in the Rafflesia post, I went hiking through a forest to find this rare and elusive flower. And one of the things you need to be exceptionally wary of, is leeches. I was wearing pants that cinched around the ankles, but alas, it was to no avail.
My partner was never once bit, because he said that he could feel them. They felt cool and water like to him he said. And he could always catch them the moment they started crawling up his skin.
So a thing or two about leeches.
They have an anti-coagulant in their bite. This means that your blood will keep flowing into their bodies and if you knock them off, it will just flow all over.
Unless you are pretty sensitive, you probably won't feel them. They feel just like the wet leaves of their surroundings, and once they attach themselves and start the blood works, you don't feel them there either because only their mouth is attached to your skin. They sort of hunch themselves and touch you as minimally as possible.
Do not put salt on them like you would a slug. This will achieve nothing. They will spit their blood back out and flail around and probably open you a new hole (to suck out of). You might think that this will force them to release their coagulating agent that they disperse when they are finished feeding. But that isn't the case either.
Just let them feed. When they are done, they will release the coagulating agent and fall off.
Otherwise, if you knock them off, you could bleed for days. You have to get something to stopper the blood. And let me tell you, band-aids won't cut it. What does stopper the blood is newspaper. When newspaper gets wet and and is allowed to sun-bake, it dries. But tissue paper takes much longer to dry. The dryness of the newspaper helps to stopper the blood a bit. it will absorb the blood, stick to the skin, and dry that way. But be warned. if you remove the newspaper, it will start bleeding again.
These bites don't leave scars and will be gone in about a week.
 |
| the culprit |
Here they are attached to my skin(and yes I did say, 'hang on let me get a picture of this') and the right one is after we pulled it off ...and stepped on it. But know this, it didn't die after that. It just reached out in search of more blood!
This one looks worse than it is. I wasn't kidding when I said that it would not stop bleeding. The left is a picture of the bit of newspaper I was attempting to still the blood with, and if you cant tell from the surrounding dried blood, it was working. And the right picture was taken a day or two after wards showing you just how small the bite was. A pin point really. And they cleared up in a week or less.
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