Blood donors vs blood suckers! An interaction with leeches in the wet evergreen forests of Western Ghats

For the last two years, my Ph.D. colleague cum best friend Vimhaseno (Vimha) and me together have been in field quiet frequently. During our work in the forests, our major problem was ticks in summer, while in the rainy season it was……… leeches! To avoid ticks in field we mostly used a scrubber and had dettol water baths. Ticks are much harmless compared to leeches (in my opinion!!). So, what is the best way to avoid leeches?…. just avoid rainy days for field work!! ha ha…. but when it became inevitable, we had go.

  Leech (Haemadipsa sylvestris)   PC: www.gettyimages.in

We knew leeches come up during rains and hence would go prepared usually with a odomos (repellant). But during 2017 summer field work in Makutta, when I least expected leeches, one of them crawled upto my knee and I did not know about it until my pant was soaked with blood. Next day, again I had another leech bite in the same place. Forest guards Mr. Ashik and Mr. Manohar told it was because the leeches could smell the wound or rather blood, and hence the bite. This year while working in Beedahalli in Pushapagiri wildlife sanctuary, we encountered leeches again, as it used to rain every night during our stay. An interesting thing about leeches is they are mostly found on the forest paths and rarely inside the forest (that is away from the forest path). During our first day in Beedahalli, we applied oil on our legs but still leeches had their way and crawled up our legs. Worst was when I had a bite on my thigh and as usual I got to know about it only after my pant was blood soaked. Second day, we smeared salt, and carried a box of salt into the field. But it was tricky, we had to frequently rub our shoes and socks with salt, and in case we find a leech, we had to either sprinkle salt or remove it with a stick. Along with this, the previous day we had folded up our pants so that we can pull out the crawling leeches. This had given us quiet a few scratches from the bushes. Rubbing salt on the legs now was like the adage ‘rubbing salt into wounds’!!

Without much options, we continued rubbing salt daily during our field work in Beedahalli. From Beedahalli, we reached Cherambane in Kodagu for my field work. The first thing that we did here was to buy a bottle of dettol and apply it on our wounds and take bath with dettol water. By now our leech bites were drying off but were itchy and leaving their marks behind. We joked that “we can never be models because of these bites!” Back to Bangalore, Vimha did some online research for avoiding leech bites and concluded salt was best. In our subsequent field visit to Marigudi in Pushpagiri Wildlife Sanctuary, we carried odomos and dettol, salt we could anyway borrow in the antipoaching camp (APC). On our first day, we applied loads of odomos and dettol on our legs, shoes and socks. We folded up our pants, so that leeches were more visible if they were crawling up. Since it had been raining continuously in the last few days, the number of leeches were enormous. Just in the initial few meters, leeches began crawling up our shoes, and we felt we could not continue with this field work at all. For Ph.D. students some situations are like do or die, and hence we decided we should go ahead with the field work come what may. Again, we found that leeches were mostly in the forest path and quiet less in the thick of vegetation.

This time fortunately, forest guard Mr. Shivaram had a unique way of getting rid of leeches. He had made a salt ball tied to a stick, and used to dab it around his shoes and legs frequently to avoid leeches. We found this interesting and tried, it worked. A leech would loosen its hold from the skin, if the salt ball was dabbed on it. We decided the next day, each of us would carry an individual salt ball and asked Shivaram anna to make one for each of us. He readily agreed to make it. Well, that was for the next day, but we had to work the present day with only one salt ball which we would borrow from Shivaram anna every now and then. Just when we completed our work and were making our way back to the APC, it began to rain heavily. We trekked back for around 20 minutes in the rain along with the crawling leeches. For the first time I saw so many many leeches on the forest path and all of them waiting eagerly for their prey! Whether I walked fast or ran, leeches would some how climb up my shoes. At one point I had like ten leeches sticking to the corner of my shoe, apart from this a couple of them where crawling on from other sides as well. I called out to Vimha for help but even she was busy removing leeches from her shoes. Again faced with the do or die situation.. I quickly removed the leeches with my fingers. Wait, I removed leeches with my fingers! My leechphobia was gone. After reaching the APC, we still removed leeches that were stuck inside our shoes. Next day, we again applied odomos and dettol liberally on our legs, shoes and socks and each of us carried the salt ball which Shivaram anna made for us. We frequently dabbed the salt ball onto our shoes, socks and legs. Even then, leeches would crawl up. But this time we neither panicked or bent down to remove them. Instead we would just touch those leeches with our salt ball. Lo and behold, the leeches would drop down. The salt ball was such a blessing, it helped us to work without worrying much about the leeches. All thanks to Shivaram anna for his uniqure way of avoiding leeches in the field.

By the way…. what is salt ball?! Salt ball is rock salt wrapped in a piece of cloth. Preparing a salt ball is very easy. Take some rock salt into a cloth and tie this tighlty to a stick. Wet the salt ball and dab it onto your shoes/socks and get rid of leeches!

Hope this will be useful to many forest researchers who are fighting off leeches in the field!!

PS: Our aim was not to kill leeches but to avoid their bites.

Thanks to our enthusiastic team for supporting us in field.