Having grown up on Tamborine Mountain in southern Queensland where leeches
were just a normal part of the environment, I've never thought of them as a
more than a minor nuisance, and I simply pull them off as I see or feel
them.
(I except, as far from minor, the experience of a cable-way construction
worker lost for several days in the Bellenden Ker/Bartle Freer rainforest
who got leeches under his eyelids while asleep.)
I can offer some advice however for those who find leeches a problem.
First leech socks. As previous responses have indicated, any form of
protective clothing has to be of a very fine weave to keep a leech out ...
or very thick. Any shop that sells hiking gear would be able to supply very
thick wool socks that leeches won't get through. But as someone has already
pointed out this may simply move the problem: After a few hours spent in
Washpool NP recently when leeches were plentiful and hungry, I changed all
mu clothes and thought I had checked thoroughly for leeches. A couple of
hours later unpacking the car at a motel, I noted a fully engorged leech on
the ground, and a further, more thorough check revealed that it had followed
up my sock and fed at the back of my knee. I just hadn't searched
thoroughly enough.
Second, flannelette is leech-proof, according to a friend of mine. He
extended a pair of flannelette pyjama pants to enclose his feet, and claimed
it kept the leeches out. (I did not enquire as to whether any leeches
climbed to the top of the garment and attacked there.)
Syd Curtis
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
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