big leeches

some of our most protected leeches are now losing their immunity in the house of parliment

When i was a young snipe i caught a huge Horse Leech on
an earthworm whilst fishing at my local lake. It had
managed to swallow my entire lobworm and hook. Until this
day i had never realised that earthworms were a
gastronomic preference of theirs. At another fishing
venue i watched masses of them going crazy over a scrap
of discarded bacon rind.

Which reminds me of when i was very young and found a
fully loaded H Leech squashed to a bloody pulp on a road
in Ireland. My dad reckoned that it had fallen off one of
the horses that ran traps for the tourists through the
Gap of Dunloe. I have always remembered that beached
Leech and the tick that my dad accomodated so generously
on his scrotum during that same holiday! I only heard
about that mind.

As a cub scout my mate Chris Smith got a leech on his leg
whilst swimming in the river Roden, Shropshire. This was
precisely the kind of reason i wasn't in there with him.
Arkala didn't really know what to do. Despite us telling
her to use fire she just popped it off with a stick which
caused a bit of an anticlimax to our collectively beheld,
enchanting and gruesome piece of folkloric knowledge.

Finally (before i rant on) an old school teacher of mine
swore blind that the mole on her ankle was actually a
leech's head that had been cut off and left under her
skin. We would have believed her until she proceeded to
tell us the story of being airbourne in a bus in east-
asia during a tornado. Then she witnessed a Chinese man
on a bike pedeling past her window in mid air...and she
later accused me of lying when i "borrowed" a classmate s
fossil fish after a show and tell exhibition. Mental.

Actually, looking back on it being a kid was far more
interesting.