Yesterday while I was unclogging an irrigation pipe down by our creek, an insect flew into my ear, and was unable to get back out. It moved forward against my eardrum and kept flapping around. While not exactly painful, the sensation and sound was uncomfortable and unnerving.
I was alone at home. I tried to suck it out with a vaccum cleaner, with no luck. I was contemplating pulling it out with tweezers, when Pat and Andy came home. They tried to flush it out with water. That didn't work, and only made it thrash about wildly. They eventually killed it with peroxide.
But the insect could not be flushed out, and now I couldn't hear out of that ear. So they took me to the ER. When the doctor looked inside with his scope, he said he could see what looked like the remains of a small moth. It had fallen apart from the peroxide. I asked him if I shouldn't have done that. He most people do drown the insect in such cases, just to keep it from thrashing around.
The doctor removed some fragments, but was unable to get the bulk of the body. They eventually used a saline solution to flush the carcass out. The moth itself looked something like this:
Now that's hardly "Mothra", I know, but imagine it doing a tap-dance on your eardrum. When Pat and Andy tried to flush it out while it was still alive, it was like "Mothra VS Niagra Falls". Mothra fought long and hard.
The ER nurse said they pull bugs out of people's ears about once a week on average. He also said he's never seen a bug come out of someones ear alive. I can see why.
Related Link:
When someone gets a "bug in their ear"
