This site uses cookies to improve your experience and to provide services and advertising.
By continuing to browse, you agree to the use of cookies described in our Cookies Policy.
You may change your settings at any time but this may impact on the functionality of the site.
To learn more see our
Cookies Policy.
Download our app
Doctors remove inch-long cockroach from Australian man's ear
A MAN IN Australia endured a painful hospital visit after a large cockroach burrowed into his ear and his efforts to suck it out with a vacuum cleaner failed.
Darwin-based Hendrik Helmer’s ordeal began in the early hours of Wednesday morning when he was woken by a sharp pain in his right ear, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said.
“I was hoping it was not a poisonous spider… I was hoping it didn’t bite me,” he said, adding that as the pain got worse he tried to suck the insect out with a Hoover before squirting water in his ear.
With the pain becoming excruciating, his flatmate rushed him to hospital where a doctor put oil down the ear canal.
This only forced the two centimetre (0.8 inch) roach to crawl in deeper, before it eventually began to die.
At that point the doctor put forceps into his ear and pulled out the cockroach.
“She (the doctor) said, ‘You know how I said a little cockroach, that may have been an underestimate’,” he said.
“They said they had never pulled an insect this large out of someone’s ear.”
Helmer told ABC he would not be taking any added precautions when sleeping, although friends of his said they were so perturbed by his experience that they had begun going to bed with headphones on.
- © AFP, 2014
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Australian Bizarre Bugs cockroach cockroaches Creepy Crawlies Insects SCREAM