So yesterday I booked myself a guided tour of the forest around here in the hope of getting close to wild big animals: there's elephants, big cats, bears and buffalo here. No sign of them (plenty of elephant tracks around though) but I can report another Random Bozo-first: I've had my blood sucked by a leech.
They're funny creatures: they stand on leaves in paths, waving their ends around. They look like animated nails on prozac at a trance rave: jerking and waving away in the air. I was wearing long thick socks and long trousers so most of them didn't get anywhere. My guide helped me brush a lot off and dislodged the rest with tobacco powder.
However one sod was clever - it hid in my trouser leg so when I changed my socks back in Kumily, it got a chance to latch onto my ankle and start sucking. I noticed a damp patch on my sandal strap and saw red juice leaking out. The little sod had gorged so much he was around 5mm thick (they start about 2mm thick) and leaking. My guide pulled him off and put tobacco on the cut to stop the bleeding.
I think we walked around 6 miles through dense forest - grasses taller than my head and beautiful trees with macaques and howler(?) monkeys occasionally letting us know we were trespassing. It's quite beautiful: I hope the photos do it justice.
The walk has aggravated my left knee (injured when I was training to run a marathon ages ago) and I'm now hobbling like an arthritic wheelchair with triangular wheels.
Argh!!
Leeches are totally horrid things. I was attacked by several in Indonesia about 10 years ago. The most awful experience was the little sod that attached itself to my INNER THIGH after getting through my leech socks and trousers and having a good suck. I found him when I was in the "shower" (well, the small room in the logging hut with a big drum of water in it and a smaller bucket for chucking it over yourself) after a day in the field. I screamed and paniced and ran out of the shower, grabbing a towel at the last minute. I belted round the camp in my semi-naked state until I found a colleague who managed to stop laughing and pull the bugger off me. I bled for ages. Bear in mind I was also the only white woman in a camp full of muslims.... la la la..... oopsie. I does it again.
(I have since met a man who shall remain anonymous but told me he had a leech crawl into his private parts and attach itself INSIDE his urethra. None of his pals wanted to help him remove it and it was quite nasty, poor man.)
You and your acquaintance win hands down!
The worst thing is that you can't feel anything. You can see the sod sucking at your life blood and getting fatter and fatter but can't feel a damn thing. That is the reason I freaked out. Goodness only knows how my colleague felt with one inside his willy!!!
ARGHHHHHH
© (except the blatantly ripped-off bits) Random Bozo 2006