"Natives" usually give good advice, although their terminology &
explanations are likely to be crude, unscientific & confusing. One day last
August I was collecting land snails with a friend along the wall of an old
monastery in Istanbul, Turkey. A woman looking over the wall of the
monastery saw that we were not wearing gloves & warned us about the "bugs"
that could bite. Knowing that there are no biting insects that live under
the rocks in that part of the world, we ignored her advice. The next day, at
nearby locations I started finding tiny (about 1 cm long) scorpions under
the rocks. The woman at the monastery probably had the scorpions in mind,
but in her terminology they fell under "bugs".

So the "poisonous parasite" that the speaker was warned about could have
been a parasitic worm that sickens the animals.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carol B Simpson [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2000 8:55 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: land snail parasites
>
>
> It was my understanding she didn't eat the snails, but just
> collected them.
> And she was warned by the natives that some of them carried a
> poisonous
> parasite.
>
> Carol
>