Len the Leech and the fair deal (Comprehension strategies - Author Purpose and Facts & Details).

Yesterday Tony, Gina Rose and I set out on a walk up Mt Widow Maker.  Five minutes into the trek we were joined by a fourth party.  Actually, I was joined by the fourth party, at the shin to be precise.  It was a leech. 

  It was firmly attached and I couldn’t feel a thing.  

     ‘Crikey,’ I said when I first saw the leech.  I knew that without Lindsay’s Leech Lifting Lotion, the leech would be sticking with me. 
     ‘Crikey,’ I said again.

     That’s when the leech said through its teeth (they have them), ‘G’day.  It’s me, Len the leech.  I hope you don’t mind, but I need a lift up to Mt Widow Maker.’

Len the leech joins our walk.  No 'Shave for a Cure' jokes, thank you!

      Call him a stowaway, a bludger, a scab (he will certainly leave one behind), whatever, they are people who want something for nothing.  But this slimy guy had attitude and he was no imposition because I couldn’t feel him thanks to the anaesthetic leeches inject.  Len was stuck fast and we were off, now four in our group.

     On the way, I considered some riveting facts about leeches who bear the flash scientific name Hirudinea.

     *Leeches have 32 brains (which explains why Len was so articulate).  
     *The leech brain is very similar to the human brain and is often used for  research into human brain conditions.
     *Leeches like beer!  I wonder if Queensland leeches prefer XXXX and Victorian leeches like VB.  
     *Leech diets and habitat vary.  Most leeches live in warm, wet places like the Far North Queensland forest in the wet season.  But one-fifth of all leeches live in the sea!
     *They inject an anticoagulant, hirudin to stop the host’s blood clotting.  
     *The anaesthetic and the anti-coagulant have been used in medicine to make drugs.
     * Medicinal leeches were used for bloodletting, an old treatment practised by the Ancient Egyptians and Romans.  Doctors believe bloodletting cured a whole range of illnesses and continued into the 20^th century, but today the practice is considered a waste of time.  And blood, of course.
     *Leeches can eat a huge amount – 5 times their body weight.  This means they can go for a year without food.
     *Leeches are hermaphrodites meaning they have both male and female reproductive organs so they don’t need partners to reproduce. 

     Finally, after all that thinking, we summited just before six p.m. I wrote in the Visitors' Book before the light faded.

     

Len enjoys the view from the summit of Mt Widow Maker.

Tony and Gina Rose take in the scenery.

I'd be very grateful if someone could solve the mystery of the hanging rock.  Was there a picnic here?

     Eventually we began our descent. I noticed Len had put on a bit of beef.

     ‘Len,’ I said, ‘You’re a bit thick around the middle.  Been grazing the top paddock, have you?’

     I didn’t actually say that aloud.  Tony would have thought I was a raving lunatic if I talked aloud to a leech!  So I said it in my mind and hoped Len, using one of his 32 brains, could pick up on my mental energy.

     I noticed Len went quiet.  A few strides later he was gone without so much as a goodbye or thank you. 

     I had offended Len, but the good thing was Len got to where he wanted (up Mt Widow Maker) and Tony, Gina Rose and I had a lovely walk in the freezing wind and drizzling rain.  
     It wasn’t true that Len took the free ride and gave nothing in return.  He gave me anaesthetic to relieve the pain and hirudin so my blood wouldn’t clot.  And a small wound that seeped fire engine-red blood for the next 12 hours … all over my pale cream sheets each time the scab (he left that, too) was rubbed off.  I guess in leech terms that amounted to a fair deal!