Yuk, this has to be a first, and let's hope it's the last.
An excerpt.
Leeches give teens a scare
Day of fun on North Fork reveals pool of surprises
By: Michelle Miller, Journal Staff Writer Thursday, August 3, 2006 11:45 PM PDT
A group of Auburn teens swimming in the North Fork of the American River last week didn't know they weren't alone in the water.
The swimmers encountered leeches in the water-filled bowls on granite rocks they swam to in the river.
While we're not talking giant bloodsuckers, the one-inch long sinewy creatures caught Andy Zehm, 17, of Auburn, and his friends off guard.
"You hear about it in swamps or stuff like that, but not here," he said Tuesday.
He and his friends were swimming in a wide part of the river near Ponderosa Bridge last Wednesday where the waters were still.
"It was so hot that day, it was good to go swimming," he said. "We were up there a couple of hours swimming and went to hang out on these rocks. My friend stuck her arm down in the water in the crevices between the rocks and pulled it up and there were 10 or 15 leeches all over her arm.
"The largest leeches were about the size of a tooth of a comb, he said, about an inch and a half long and 1/8-of-an-inch thick.
Andy said he and his friends jumped out of the river and pulled off the leeches. They found a few leeches on each swimmer.
"We don't know if they bit us, but it was easy to wipe them off," he said. "You'd just brush them and they'd fall off. But you could tell if you left them on, they'd start to suck on your skin.
"His mother, Lavonne Zehm, said she'd never heard of leeches in this area.
