It was an ant; I’ve had ants here since last month when I bought a couple of bags of discounted dog food. I woke up this morning and felt something fall in my ear.
It turns out that no matter how much you shake your head, bugs don’t just fall out. I tried squeezing my ear right where it connects to my head, hoping to smush it out, turns out the ant was further back, and all that did was trap it in the ear. And I then learned that ants try to dig their way out when they are stuck in someone’s ear because then it started making a noise just like a dog does when it scratches at the door. But inside my head.
I live by myself a good 45 minutes drive from the hospital, at this point I am thinking this may be something a Doctor needs to take care of, but I am also thinking I may snap if I have to have this bug in my head for much longer. And at this point I didn’t know it was an ant, I was of course thinking it was a spider, because nature thinks things like that are funny, an account of how much I hate spiders, so that would be just like her to stick one in my ear.
So I had to think of a plan, drawing on my life’s experiences, a good 20 years of tv watching, I thought back to where I had seen something like this before. ER! The one where Carter gets the cockroach out of that girl’s ear by flushing it out. I had a syringe from a dog vaccine in the kitchen, filled it with water, and squirted it in the ear. Took three tries, but finally got the ant, which turned out not to be a spider, but was still a big black ugly ant, out.
Until a few years ago, I didn’t even know you could get a bug stuck in your ear. My boss shared with me that his wife woke up in the middle of the night with that same scratching sound in her ear.
She went to the ER where they promptly dispatched the little bugger but it totally creeped her (and me) out.
For months after that, I slept with earplugs in my ears. Gah!
I had a pencil-eraser sized, copper-colored beetle in my ear once, when I was a kid. My mom thought I was lying. I spent an hour in my room alone as a result, cryng and freaking out. Finally the thing crawled out of my ear and plopped onto the pillow. Then flew away. I slept with my hands over my ears for years afterward.
I used to live in a roach infested apartment and I had a bottle of mineral oil next to my bed because of this. I had heard that if a roach got into a person’s ear, pouring a bit of mineral oil in the ear would cause the roach to change its mind about using a human ear as a cool bug hangout. Luckily I never had to find out whether this was true or not.
I’d never understood the meaning of the phrase until I saw him suffering from this - he was driven half insane because the little bugger was trying to jump out by kicking against his eardrum with its massively powerful legs, incessantly. He was nearly crying. He had to get a doctor to remove it with tweezers.
Yep, eye for an eye. It’s only fair that you be allowed inside the ant. The only known way of getting inside an ant, of course, being to turn it inside out.
I just wanted to say that the mental image of a Horrifying Howler Monkey jumping and, well, howling around the room with a bug in his ear is mightly hilarious.
I once got a small bug in my ear when I was in 2nd grade. We were out on a field trip to the local fire station. It was very hot and muggy out and I distinctly remember there being swarms of bugs out. So half way there, I get this bug in my ear and start freaking out since I can hear this thing buzzing around. They take me back to school and try to call my mom, but she wasn’t home, so I had to spend the rest of the afternoon at the emergency contact’s home (a close family friend). By the time I got there, the buzzing was starting to die down. By the time my parents picked me up, the buzzing had stopped. Being only 8 at the time, I figured that the bug had gotten out and forgot about it by the next day.
One month later, I’m at the doctor for my annual checkup and during my ear examination, he says, “Did you know there’s a bug in your ear?” I was like, “Oh yeah! I forgot about that.” He ended up flushing out with water.
I had a fly fly into my ear once. I was about 13. It was horrible - as you’d expect, the noise they make is damn near defeaning when it’s millimeters from your eardrum. This was not a small fly, so it was easy to get my finger in there and smush it. The universe being what it is [a place with a pretty nasty sense of humor], somehow the smashing made the noise MUCH louder. So I didn’t waste a lot of time taking a second stab. Thus ended the noise, but it took more effort to get all of the bits out. You might say I’m stupid for not just waiting for it to fly out of my ear, but insects are dumb and the pain was awful. It was in there at least long enough for my brain to go “OW, what the fuck is going on? Holy shit, there’s a fly buzzing inside my ear!” which felt like a very long time indeed. The story ended happily, although my ear hurt for days afterwards due to the noise and the tenacity with which I was scraping at the insect and its remains. I hope I never again have cause to be so determined in getting something out of my aural cavity.
And the worst part of the story is that I had successfully sublimated the entire incident until I read Horrifying Howler Monkey’s post. Thanks a lot, pal.
One night I woke up with a horrible sound and sensation in my ear. I panicked, and demanded that my husband wake up RIGHT NOW and get that bug out with tweezers. Normally I’m an extremely sedentary type of person, but that night I was hopping and shaking my head like a madwoman. The bug fell out of my ear just as my husband found the tweezers, and he squished it before I could put my glasses on and take a good look at it.
I hope I NEVER have anything like that happen again.
I’d be very careful about poking in my ears with foreign objects. (tweezers, Qtips, etc.) If I should ever encounter this situation my first impulse would be to grab the old shop-vac and suck that critter out. It’ll even do the smushing for you.
The absolute BEST way to get bugs out of one’s ear is to flush it out with water. To make it less traumatic, use warm water. The best way of squirting the water into the ear is with a bulb syringe (Commonly used with infants and small children for sucking things out of their noses.). They hold quite a lot of water, yet aren’t humongous. They are also very easy to control the flow of water so that you don’t squirt too hard into your ear.
