Gadling

One of the most vivid, horrific memories I have from traveling is when I discovered leeches all over my legs while trekking in Nepal.

Leeches are not fun to find on your body and let me tell you, a sense of panic sets in almost immediately--especially when you can actually watch them swell with your blood.

My trekking partner and I would periodically check each other's arms and legs for hitchhiking leeches and when discovered, we would burn them off with a small lighter we carried with us.

Watching them lift their heads and silently scream is an image now firmly burned in my head.

There are other ways to remove the bloodsuckers that don't involve sticking a lighter to your leg; the video above illustrates just one of these methods using nothing but water and salt. And, as far as I can tell, there is no screaming involved.

Strangely enough, I've actually gained a new appreciation for leeches after reading a fascinating article in the New Yorker (abstract here) detailing just how marvelous these disgusting creatures actually are. Did you know, for example, that the anesthetic they inject when biting is a powerful pain killer and anti-coagulate that modern science can't replicate?

There is a whole lot about these bloodsuckers I did not know while traveling in Nepal. But even armed with this knowledge today, I wouldn't hesitate to burn them off my body as quickly as humanly possible. Ugh!