What is it?

[tracy]

What is it? The photo is here:

http://www.swog.org.uk/news/what-is-the-monster/

[Darren]

it's a leech.

[tracy]

I think Sean thought it was a leech, but weird to find it under the charcoal kiln.

Patrick Roper (ecologist) said:

It looks like a leech of some description (with a sucker at the end and

blood in it). They do spend time out of water and are attracted by warmth,

so may have made for the charcoal hearth.

[Darren]

I had one climbing up my garage door not too long ago. Not sure how it got there.

[greyman]

When we found the 'monster' it was one of three that I found while digging out clay for the hearth to put our new kiln on. The clay came out of a drainage ditch near the kiln site and the three them were found about a foot down in the bed of the old clay bottom. They were all curled up like you find earth worms when digging in the veggie patch in the winter. All three were slightly flattened as they opened out and this made me wonder if they were flatworms - my mind jumped to the conclusion that they were New Zealand flat worms but looking them up they are a different colour and the flat 'skirt along the edges is light coloured. Trying to find images of leeches on Google just didn't turn out that easy and we don't have any information in any of the reference books we have here at home. If anyone can I.D. it and give the latin name that would be useful. We want to update our 'stock' list anyway.

Greyman

[tracy]

Dale from Buglife thinks it might be a horse leech, but difficult to tell from the photograph!