Oliver and Freda

So this is Freda, daughter of The Great Mandini and Charley and she IS as pretty as this. Last Tuesday, a lovely warm morning at Lake Padden, they met (in the flesh - he's been reading her blog and looking at her pictures at the salon for more than a year) for the first time, though it was as if they'd always known each other. They just started right in with the play. Into the water. Trading snacks. Easy splashing. Sitting in the sun. It was one of those sweet little moments in life.

Except that Oliver had a leech on his ankle which I just unthinkingly plucked off (it didn't seem to be attached) and started examining. It was about 3/8 of an inch long. So we went home and launched a leech info gathering mission. We had to google, get a library book, but he's totally into it (as am I : )

Turns out they are related to earthworms, annelids (segmented worms). They have 33 or 34 segments (sources, or perhaps it's species differ). Suckers on both ends of their bodies (how convenient), 3 jaws.

3 main classes of leeches (no pronunciation help here, though gnatbobdellida seems like a good password and makes me think of mr. bob dobalina):

Gnatbobdellida - have jaws, bite their hosts with their teeth, and secrete hirudin, an anticoagulent.

Rhyncobdellida - no jaws, but they insert a proboscis into the host, secrete an enzyme called hemetin, which dissolves blood clots (handy!).

Pharyngobdellida - no jaws or teeth - they just swallow things whole, eating mall invertebrates (supposed to be small invertebrates, but I liked the typo better).

Leeches can ingest several times their weight in blood and can survive several months without feeding (again, how handy!).

They have one or more pair of eyes. They have sensory organs on their heads and bodies that detect movement, and fluctuations in light and temperature. They also have chemical receptors on the head that allow them to smell.

FOR MATURE READERS ONLY: Leeches are hermaphrodites, with both male and female sex organs. This perhaps will be interesting when Oliver brings it up in preschool. They also have something called a clitellum (we skipped this part), an area of thickened skin that is only visible during mating (hmmmm...). They reproduce by intertwining their bodies and depositing sperm into each other’s clitellar area (speed-breeding?) - good thing we don't have that capacity. After fertilization, the eggs are in a cocoon, which the leech deposits under a log, on a leaf, or maybe in your daughter's ponytail. They hatch several weeks or months later (oh come ON, is it weeks, or is it months???), mini-leeches. They die after reproducing once or twice (I can relate).

Yes, there was widespread 'medicinal' bloodletting, which was eventually abandoned, though medical researchers have recently rediscovered (or discovered?) some benefits. Leeches produce substances - anti-coagulants, anesthetics. Maybe one day we'll carry leech packs in our first aid kits.

We also learned this week that urine will anesthetize the wound from an urchin spine sting while you get to the medic.

I just never saw parenting quite like this...