June 12, 2002

3:00 AM

Don't click this link!A woman in Athens, Greece went to the doctor complaining of headaches. Upon examination, the doctor discovered a SPIDER LIVING IN HER EAR. Good night, folks, pleasant dreams. (via Fark)
posted by RylandDotNet (32 comments total)

A classic urban legend, isn't it?
posted by cx at 3:16 AM on June 12, 2002

As cuckoo as it sounds, I have a very intense fear of crickets after hearing a story similar to this one.

*sigh* Now spiders too? Gee, thanks, Ryland. =)

good thing I couldn't sleep in the first place

And the picture! Aaah!!
posted by lnicole at 3:16 AM on June 12, 2002

I had a spider crawl into my mouth when sleeping and woke up to find it in there, needless to say I spat it out. I thought this was a pretty cool story until I heard that it is reckoned on average we unintentionally eat 3 - 4 spiders a year in our sleep.
posted by Frasermoo at 3:44 AM on June 12, 2002

Well, that would explain a mate of mine trying to tell me that spiders enjoy drinking from drool that leaks out your mouth when you're sleeping. I'm not convinced, surely there are better places to for our eight legged friends to quench their thirst?
posted by kebab at 5:14 AM on June 12, 2002

Maybe they like drool. It could be the beer of the spider world.
posted by jackspot at 5:17 AM on June 12, 2002

mmmmmmm, drool....
posted by crunchland at 5:40 AM on June 12, 2002

...breakfast of champions.
posted by jackspot at 5:58 AM on June 12, 2002

worse than spiders...cockroachs LOVE drool!
posted by darkpony at 6:02 AM on June 12, 2002

Speaking of roaches...
posted by groundhog at 6:05 AM on June 12, 2002

College students' ears: the trailer park of the insect world.
posted by groundhog at 6:15 AM on June 12, 2002

My favorite was the college student who went to his campus health center complaining of head pain. When the doctor cut away his dreds it revealed a scorpion living in his hair.
posted by fleener at 6:22 AM on June 12, 2002

My ex-roommate told me the story of his aunt, while vacationing in the Bahamas, who felt a bug crawl into her ear. Terrified, she began digging at her ear with her finger, thereby only pushing the bug in deeper. She ran to the faucet and put her ear under running water in an attempt to flush out the intruder, but managed only to send the bug swimming into her sinus cavity.

(Note: the following is not for the easily icked)

It was at this point she drove herself to the hospital with some sort of beetle crawling around in her face, where they performed emergency sinus surgery to remove the unwanted guest in her head.

The physician mentioned that this happens more than one would think.
posted by brittney at 7:07 AM on June 12, 2002

Moving on to larger animals, I once kicked to death in my sleep a mouse that had crawled into my bed (country house, entered the sheets at the feet). I remembered my "strange dream" as I woke up in the morning, threw the sheets on the floor and, sure enough, a dead, blodied rodent lay there. Pretty gross, but I'll do it all over again before putting a critter in any body orifice. This book will tell you about Thai jail emergency surgery with a shaving blade to remove roaches' eggs from a prisoner's ear and how they then double as an extra protein source ... as in a *needed* extra protein source.
posted by magullo at 7:31 AM on June 12, 2002

That sinus cavity story sounds an awful lot like an urban legend.
posted by O9scar at 7:44 AM on June 12, 2002

i didn't have a roach in my ear or my mouth, but i remember doing battle with a small plague of roaches when we first moved into our current flat.

those interested can go to my site; tales #30/31 for the full story.

my wife also told me that when she was a kid a cockroach ran across her mouth when she was asleep. it freaked her out something fierce.

spiders used to make me feel oogey, but they're nowhere near roaches on the ooginess scale.
posted by bwg at 8:01 AM on June 12, 2002

i once got a moth stuck in my ear, flew in and got stuck and I presume died. never did go see the doctor...
posted by Hackworth at 8:30 AM on June 12, 2002

Sinus cavity story must be a UL: there's no connection between the ear and the sinus.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:35 AM on June 12, 2002

Bugs in your ear: ick

Fish in your urethra: hypermegazillion ick
posted by groundhog at 8:43 AM on June 12, 2002

Eww.
posted by animoller at 9:19 AM on June 12, 2002

Ewww indeed.
posted by SisterHavana at 9:25 AM on June 12, 2002

i once knew a woman who swallowed a fly. she didn't know why...
posted by dobbs at 10:00 AM on June 12, 2002

That story likely is an urban legend, but still horrifying in concept.
posted by brittney at 10:04 AM on June 12, 2002

Oh god, why did you tell me? I haven't been able to kill the roach problem in my apartment, and now I won't be able to sleep. Ack.
posted by evilmaryellen at 10:12 AM on June 12, 2002

there's no connection between the ear and the sinus

Clears throat and then equalizes pressure in ear —

Learned this in college when I signed up for a class on the 'Nature and Process of Audition'. I was interested in acoustical issues in architecture at the time. When I found out the class was mostly about anatomy I stuck with it because I was one of two men in a class full of (30) women.
posted by Dick Paris at 10:15 AM on June 12, 2002

For the bug to make the circuit the eardrum would need to have been broken. It can happen when you have a severe cold.
posted by Dick Paris at 10:18 AM on June 12, 2002

got a spider bite on the eye once when i was quite young. wouldn't recommend it.

not quite sure it was a bite, but this is how it was explained to me (my eye might just have been irritated by a spider traipsing across it.) anyhow, required a trip to the emergency room either way.

ON THE EYE, my friends.

let that be a lesson to you: don't play behind old chairs.

posted by fishfucker at 10:20 AM on June 12, 2002

More information on the candiru fish from the Straight Dope:

Can the candirú fish swim upstream into your urethra?
Folllow-up article
posted by hootch at 10:52 AM on June 12, 2002

ew

isn't there some kind of bug that likes to eat the eye crust we get when we sleep?

ew
posted by lotsofno at 11:38 AM on June 12, 2002

lotsofno-what I always heard was that yeah, there are little microscopic arachnids or some-such that reside on our eyelashes. They rid us of the crusties...that's why you get the crusties in the corners...no eyelashes for them to live on....can't reach the crusties to nibble away at them.....
posted by Windigo at 4:12 PM on June 12, 2002

Try this first before heading to a hospital. When my gardening mad friend had an insect in his ear, we got the helpful hints book out and it said to shine a torch in his ear. It may have just been coincidence, but it worked and the offending ant crawled out.

Images of an ant with a top hat and cane, dancing in the spotlight come to mind.
posted by Tarrama at 4:57 PM on June 12, 2002

Images of an ant with a top hat and cane, dancing in the spotlight come to mind.

hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal,
send me a kiss by wire, baby my heart's on fire.

if you refuse me
honey, you'll lose me
then you'll be left alone

oh baby, telephone
and tell me i'm your own
posted by bwg at 7:16 PM on June 12, 2002

Tarrama, instead of shining a torch in your ear, you can just turn your head so that that your ear has a direct contact with the sun (you have go outdoors first, of course). It works exactly the same.

Oh and the greek story is 100% true. It was on the TV news two days ago. (I live in Greece.)
posted by kchristidis at 12:14 PM on June 13, 2002