When one goes fishing, they never expect to become the one being caught. When I used to live in Alton, NH, I lived next to a lake called Halfmoon Lake. This lake was a private lake that only people in the neighborhood had access to, so it was always fairly quiet and extremely relaxing. So, every summer me and my family would go to the lake about two or three times a week. Each time we went down there, I would go swimming in a little area that was filled with enormous rocks. I’m not talking 2 or 3 foot rocks here. I’m talking massive 10 foot long boulders where the fish slithered around and feasted on the moss growing half an inch away from the surface. When me and my brother found out about this place we realized that all the big fish hung out there, and so we deemed it bass rock. It was extremely fun swimming at the fish and sometimes even trying to catch them with our net, until this happened.

Before the incident occurred it was a pretty normal and fun day. We unpacked our towels and food, put sunscreen on, and I went out fishing on the old, moldy, and creaky wooden docks about 100 feet off of bass rock. After about 30 minutes or so of no bites, I decided to put my mask and snorkel on and figured I’d have better luck if I tried to catch the fish with my hands instead. When I jumped off the dock, the cold water splashed my skin like a frigid winter breeze as my feet touched the gooey bottom, and I started to make my way over there.

At bass rock there was only one rock that you could actually sit or stand on because it was so flat, unlike all the other rocks which mostly had jagged edges. I usually swam over from shore, so when I arrived at the rock I simply looked around my body to make sure there wasn’t any unwanted gunk on my body. It was when I looked at the bottom of my right foot I saw it, a leech! I screamed as loud as I could, “DAD! HELP! THERE’S A LEECH ON ME!” Instead of trying to get it off of my foot right then and there, I floundered around like a one-eyed fish that had just been hooked. My dad was sprinting out to me as I continued to create a ruckus while trying to swim towards him. Once he was close to me, I plunged underwater and grabbed the leech off my foot. After removing the leech, my dad kept me from freaking out any more and assured me that it couldn’t have been a leech. He walked me back to shore and I sat down with my towel wrapped around me as tight as possible, like a shield protecting me from my fears. I never went back there until almost a year later.

Looking back on it, my dad was definitely right about it not being a leech. I think the reason I flipped out so much was because I had never had any unusual stuff on me after venturing over there. Also, at the time, I’d never seen a leech before. That being said, me seeing something black on my foot in a shady part of the lake freaked me out. Another thing I didn’t know about leeches was that they completely attach to your body and you have to rip them off of your skin. Whatever was on me was merely dangling from my foot, definitely not like a leech. So by using common sense, I can confidently conclude that a small weed was hanging from my skin and I mistook it for a leech. Even when I eventually overcame my fear for bass rock and went back there, I never felt the same way about it ever again.