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Comment by willsmith72 | Hacker News Reader

I don't buy the alternatives at all.

> Instead, he recommends using a fingernail or a credit card to break the seal between the leech's mouth and your skin quickly

Far easier said than done. If it were that easy why even go for the salt?

> Another option is to wait until the leech is done feeding so it will fall off on its own

I'm just gonna wait 30+ minutes with a leech on me? no thanks

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If you would rather follow your gut because the expert's recommendation sounds "too easy, then picture a similar scenario in your own area of expertise where you give friendly advise to a random person and they react like that to your advice.

If the article has a video or something showing how to "using a fingernail or a credit card to break the seal" I'd be so much more convinced.

I can't even imagine how to do that correctly when I'm sitting in an air-conditioned room so the chance I'll able to "break the seal" in the wild as the expert suggests is around zero. Especially the article says one has to do it "quickly" so it doesn't have time to vomit blood back into me.

It's really not that difficult. You scrape them off you with the edge of the card, where they attach to you

Unless I misread, GP thinks the advice is too hard, not "too easy". Which yes, if I told someone playing games on linux is easy you just need to use `winetricks` to install the correct version of X, Y, Z, then modify library overrides, I would entirely expect a layperson to say "easier said than done".

"too easy" was a quotation taken directly from their comment. I replied to that.

As someone who’s had leeches on me, North Eastern America, and never even heard of salting them I’ve always just treated them like a bandaid and ripped them off quickly. The hardest part really is grabbing them since they are slippery. I assume there’s nastier leeches out there though where that might be a bad idea.

I would always put the area with the leech back into the water and then use a sharp edged rock to scrape them off. They seemed a little bit more willing to leave my skin doing it that way.

Tweezers or tongs in a first aid kit are pretty useful for that and for removing ticks.

Is there anything tongs can’t do?

Leeches will pop off easily. There's a nastier cousin of leeches (lampreys) that I think you'll rip a small chunk of flesh out if you'd yank them off forcefully.

I'd like to emphasize that they are metaphorical cousins only, being segmented-worms and jawless-fish respectively. :p

P.S.: "Would you rather fight one lamprey-sized leech, or 400 leech-sized lampreys?"

In my experience, the reason people don't scrape them off is the rumour that they leave their mouthparts behind.

Removing the terrestrial leeches that live near me in Australia is easy. Put the edge of a credit card a few cm away, resting against your skin at a slight angle, and then quickly scrape the leech away like you're scraping paint.

> Far easier said than done. If it were that easy why even go for the salt?

I think it's more gross to pluck it out. Hence why people just pour salt on it or let it finish feeding maybe? Leeches can be really viscerally repulsive to look at and touch

So are you suggesting that you would pour salt on it?

You make it sound like a bad thing

Yeah, no. “Also consider just letting the spider lay eggs in your ear and then it will move along on its own.” Uh, that’s not gonna happen.

The difference with spiders laying eggs in your ear, is that leeches sucking on your body is a regognized medical treatment for various things.

They don't lay eggs, they don't infest you. They just suck blood and are gone.

But just nitpicking on your example. I had leeches involuntarily on me for real where I just ripped them off and I don't think I would ever considering letting them suck till they are full.

Makes you wonder what we have been missing out on in terms of spider-based treatments...

It's a canonical spider-and-egg problem.

A colonoscopy is a legitimate, useful medical procedure, but I don’t want one of those to sneak up on me either.

I think I could tolerate a medical leech if required. I wouldn’t love it, but you gotta do what you’ve gotta do. I would be less tolerant of one randomly taking a meal from my leg.

They just suck blood, while comingling their gut bacteria with your bloodstream.

Bit of a difference.

Real things people said on 911 calls:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPSEw8XnjH8

I dunno, I think I'd rather dribble in some hydrogen peroxide to sterilize and remove the eggs, as opposed to getting a spider bite on the inside of my ear canal.

Now that I think about it, I have no idea what hydrogen peroxide does to spiderweb material. It seems like the kind of thing one might learn during a childhood phase of mostly-unthinking cruelty to animals.

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