Skin crawling drama at the river

I took G. and L. and two of their friends on a bike ride to the Saco River to swim (in a different part of the river than where we went kayaking). All the girls wore their bathing suits under their shorts and t-shirts and packed their towels and water bottles in their bike baskets. It was a fun 3 1/2 mile ride with a water break about halfway there.

Once we got to the river, we had to drag the bikes over some rocks and found a nice spot to swim.

After much pleading to swim to the little island just off the shore (about 50 yards away), I finally agreed on the condition that they had to swim with me because we didn't have noodles or floats with us (no room on the bikes for that gear). The girls were standing on a sandbar about 1/2 way to the island at that point so I thought they could manage the remaining distance without much trouble.

I swam to the four girls at the sandbar and decided to take two at a time over to the island, and took L. and her friend K. first. The girls swam the distance easily and climbed up on the island's rock. But as I turned back to get the other two girls, L. started screaming.

"mommy, Mommy, MOMmy, MOOOOOMMY!!"

I asked her what was wrong and her friend K. said, "Oh gosh L., you got leeches."

So L. did what most females would do, she started swiping at her skin, jumping around and screaming.

L.'s hysteria grew and I had to firmly tell her to stay still so I could take a look. I confirmed (silently) that she had a whole bunch of tiny, squirming leeches attached to her legs and feet.

I thought (again, silently), "Oooh, yuck-a-doo but I am the mommy so I can NOT freak out."

I tried to get the leeches off with my fingernails but there were too many and my nails weren't working very well (probably the one and only time in my life I wished I had long nails). I knew I had to get L. back to the shore where my first aid kit was.

As far as L. was concerned, getting back in to the river was unthinkable.

I wasn't so keen on that either (I had several leeches on my feet that I couldn't deal with at the time) but we had no choice.

So I sent K. out first and asked G., who I knew was a solid swimmer, to meet K. and guide her back to shore while I carried a hysterical L. back in to the water.

I swam L. back to shore in a rescue carry and was thankful that I remembered my former training a certified swim instructor and the basic life guard class I had taken years ago.

Once I got L. to shore I had my hands full with her and the three other girls, who were also jumping around in a building hysteria trying to find out if they had leeches.

Then K. pointed and exclaimed, "L. you have some on your back too!"

That made L. jump and swipe at her back while she also hit her legs and feet trying to "get them off, Off, OFF!"

I snapped at the other girls to check each other for leeches away from L. I could barely handle L. in her current state of hysteria but felt bad I was short with the other girls. But at the time I didn't feel like I had a lot of options.

I sifted through my backpack only to find that someone had removed the first aid kit and had not returned it. (As of today, that "someone" in my family has yet to fess up.)

So I grabbed a plastic card from my wallet but it was too thick and didn't bend enough to fit between L.'s toes (she had several leeches between each one). So after testing a handful of cards, I found my old BJ's one had the most flexibility and worked the best.

Now when I say that L. had leeches all over her, I'm not exaggerating. The tiny little suckers were all over her feet, legs and back. A conservative guess would be around 40, although I think there were more than that.

The worst clusters of the suckers were on her recent cuts, which is why I think they were attracted to her in the first place. The day before L. had sliced her leg and had a 3-inch cut that was still scabbing over. She had about 10 leeches on that cut alone and as I scrapped the leeches off, it opened up and started dripping blood down her leg.

It took about 10 minutes to scrape the leeches off with the card, although it felt like an hour. As I worked I explained to L. and the other girls that leeches were used at hospitals by doctors of the past and that I thought they were still used in some places because leeches were good for healing.

As you can imagine, the girls thought that bit of history would have been more interesting if it they weren't having a hands-on learning experience at the time.

L.'s feet became full of sand during the leech removal and I couldn't tell if I got them all off so I suggested we rinse her feet off.

Oh no, there was no more walking anywhere near the water for L., no matter how important those suckers were in the history of medicine.

I got off as many leeches as I could see and then took a moment to scrape off the ones on my own foot and the one leech that B. had on her back. The other two girls did not have any on them.

L. had calmed down enough to ask to go home at that point. That was when I realized that we had a 3 1/2 mile bike ride ahead of us.

The girls put on their clothes, shoes and bike helmets in record time amidst the shutters from the creepy crawly jitters they had. They were troopers though and we made tracks away from the river. No one was interested in stopping for a water break on the way back (although L. found a dead butterfly on the side of the road and picked it up to bring home, which I took as a good sign that she was calmed down enough to pick that up).

I got L. in the shower once we got home and tried to put salt between her toes to get rid of the remaining leeches. The salt didn't seem to work (it probably would have but I think it just wasn't working fast enough for L.) so I went back to scraping them off with the card. Unfortunately for L. she found one in a particularly sensitive private area (just on the outside edge). And since it had been attached for a while, it was full of blood and not easy to scrap off in that tender spot. L. was mortified and really upset about the bleeding that happened after the leech was removed (leeches know how to open a vein).

Later that night L. just wanted to snuggle with me. She was experiencing the aftereffects of feeling like her skin was crawling and asked me a couple of times to check her body again for leeches. There weren't any left.

She woke up several times that night saying she kept dreaming about 'creepy crawling stuff' and couldn't sleep.

The next day I asked her if she thought having leeches was worse than the time we were swarmed by the yellow jackets (everyone in the family was stung multiple times and the incident ranks top on our list of our scariest experience while hiking).

"No, the bees were worse."

OK, so there is hope we might go swimming again this summer.

Next time we're going to the lake.

Since we had never swam to the island before (in background), we believe L. picked up the leeches on her swim over there. We've swam in this area for years without ever even seeing a leech. A cluster of the little suckers on a small cut on L.'s toe. G. snapped the pics while I helped L. That old BJ's card really took care of those suckers. The dead butterfly, which proved a nice distraction at home, that L. picked up on the ride back. As long as she has something to hold, she's a calmer kid.