Growing up on Martha’s Vineyard, I’m a born host. Friends start popping up with the crocuses in the spring, checking our availability for weekends in July and August, and my husband, Dave, and I are happy to oblige. Last July, an unplanned and uninvited visitor arrived seeking haven. This was not a college friend or long-lost cousin, nor even the same species.
It was 4 a.m. when my visitor knocked, not on the front door but on my eardrum. It woke me out of a sound sleep, bouncing around inside my ear like a lunatic in a padded cell. It’s quite loud to hear something pummel your eardrum in such a way. And jarring. And totally gross.
Wsh wsh wshwsh wshwshwsh wsh wsh echoed through my head as if I were sitting inside a wash cycle. I jumped up in bed.
“What’s wrong with you?” Dave mumbled, barely feigning interest.
“I have a bug in my ear.” And then wsh wshwsh wsh. “Aaah!” I jumped again.
“Are you sure?” His eyes remained tightly locked until further notice.
Wshwshwsh wsh wsh wshwsh! “Aaah! Yes, I’m sure. Get the little flashlight.”
A peek inside my ear revealed nothing. Meanwhile the little bugger continued its assault, clearly wanting out. At Dave’s suggestion, I banged my head against the mattress as hard as I could. My guest took a moment of pause – to laugh at me, I’m sure. And then wshwsh. “Aaah!” Once again, I jumped a mile out of my flesh.
“I need this thing out. I need to go to the ER,” I said matter-of-factly. As a last ditch effort, I quickly Googled “bug in ear” for a better suggestion. At the sight of the first selection – something about bugs crawling in through your ear to eat your brain – I declared, “Yes, I have to go.”
During the car ride to the hospital, the little dude quieted down long enough for me to convince myself that I was seriously losing it. Then wshwsh. “Aaah!” Okay, maybe not.
At the emergency room, the man behind the registration desk asked, “What are you here for?”
“I have a bug in my ear.” I replied simply, as if this happened all the time.
“You’re like the tenth person in the past two days,” he said. “Any pain?”
“Nope, just annoyance.”
I settled into the bed in an examination room and tried to doze. At this point, the wshes had died down. The poor little guy was losing his fight, I thought, listening to the crackle of his death throes. By the time the doctor came in, I was fairly certain the bug was dead. But as I had said to Dave en route to the hospital, “Even if it dies, I want it out and I want to see it so that I know it’s out.”
The doctor asked what was up. “I have a bug in my ear,” I said once again. I assumed this shouldn’t sound bizarre at this point considering what the guy at the registration desk had said. He’d made it sound like all this doctor had been doing for days was pulling insects out of aural canals.
He looked in both my ears. “There is something in there,” he said. “It’s a tiny black speck.”
“I think it died while I was waiting,” I offered.
“Well, we’ll clean it out of there.”
Yes. You will, I thought. Because now I have a dead bug in my ear, and that’s disgusting.
He flushed my ear canal with a syringe of warm water while I held an ear pan underneath. “There it is!” he declared.
He held the pink pan so I could see the tiny black carcass floating in its bath water. My little friend the flea (or gnat, or fruit fly – clearly, I’m no entomologist) had met his untimely demise.
As the doc cleaned up, he said, “I pulled a Japanese beetle out of one guy’s ear last night and a moth out of another. And one guy had some bug so big we couldn’t get it out!”
I read about that guy a week later in the paper. He was a member of the Vineyard Sound a cappella group. He had to go until the next morning with a moth inside his ear until he could get off the Island to have a specialist extract it. A moth! For, like, twenty-four hours!
The doc told me to take care, and off I went to purchase all-season earmuffs.
Visitors are still welcome in our home any time of year, but as for the bugs, I’ll say this: Moths, dance in the outside light at your leisure. Crickets, chirp merrily in the grass. Lady bugs, my garden es su garden. But for those who seek more intimate accommodation, mind the sign hanging above my right ear that reads, “no vacancy.”
This article appears in July 2009.
This story still makes me laugh – because it really is true and it could only happen to Linley!
It seems that insects crawling into ear canals is more common than one would expect or hope for. I just spent the 4th of July trying to get a creepy-crawly out of my ear canal, an experience I hope never to repeat.
I was at the park relaxing when something large and dark flew straight at my head and disappeared into my ear within seconds. It was quick and determined. My brother jumped up to help, but it was already out of sight. This isn’t the kind of situation one is taught how to deal with.
The best course of action available was to jump in the lake. I made sure plenty of water got in there and kept is submersed until I was sure it was dead. Meanwhile, I tried to get it out, but I think I ended up pushing it further in.
The lesson I learned is to not directly mess with it, other than wisely killing it as quickly as possible. I’m not so sure about trying to patiently encourage it to leave, as it’s a disturbing experience to have a burrowing bug burrowing into your head.
My brother drove me to an urgency care clinic. They couldn’t get out and so sent me on to emergency care. The nurse practitioners were of no use, other than causing me pain. They called in the experts who, using a microscope, were able to get it out.
It turned out to be a Japanese beetle, a sizeable insect. There an invasive species that has a body, with a hardened spine, specifically designed for burrowing. Having something like that heading in the direction of one’s brain is not generally not preferred.
The medical procedures combined took several hours. It managed to get all the way in, crammed up against my ear drum. In fact, one of it’s legs got hooked directly into the ear drum itself. So, I now have a small tear in it, although apparently no damage to my hearing.