Imagine the horror of finding a spider living inside your ear. That was exactly the case for one Chinese woman this week. The unidentified woman had been suffering from some ear irritation for five days when she finally decided to seek medical attention. Dr. Liu Sheng, the woman’s physician at China’s Changsha Central Hospital, looked inside the woman’s ear and was horrified to find a spider looking back at her.

Dr. Sheng chose to flush the spider out with some saline solution, as opposed to removing it with surgical tools. After the saline flushing, the spider crawled out and the women reportedly cried tears of joy.

Why Spiders Like Ears

The spider likely crawled into the women’s ear canal while she was sleeping. Spiders, and other insects, will crawl into an ear looking for warmth, moisture, and harborage. An ear canal closely resembles the borough of many different kinds of spiders. Ticks are also common ear inhabitants. Always on the lookout for a generous blood supply, the inner ear and eardrum offer an all-you-can eat smorgasbord for these tiny bloodsuckers.

Removing Spiders from the Ear

Removing spiders and other insects from one’s ear is a very delicate process. If you attempt to remove the new inhabitant with a q-tip or even a surgical tool, you will startle it. A spider will then retreat as far down the ear canal as possible and dig its sharp barbs into the sides of the canal. Flushing the inhabitant with hydrogen peroxide or a saline solution can help evacuate your ear’s new tenant. If you suspect an insect or spider has made your ear it’s new home, please seek the help of a medical doctor.

If you are having an issue with spiders inside your home, contact a pest control professional immediately!

Bulwark Exterminating
3932 Octagon Road
North Las Vegas, NV 89030
(702) 255-6363
bulwarkpestcontrol.com

K-9 Sweeps LLC: Bed Bug Control
& K9 Scent Detection
8201 Woodland Prairie Avenue
Las Vegas, NV 89129
(702) 586-5179
k-9sweeps.com

Orkin
4550 Ziebart Pl # A
Las Vegas, NV 89103
(702) 597-9760
orkin.com

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A twitter buddy of mine mentioned recently that she was having spider problems in her house.  All right. No biggie!  Then she mentioned that the “conkers” she was using to fend off her little friends weren’t working like everyone had told her.

Conkers?  One, what’s a conker?  And two, how do they battle spiders?  I was going to get to the bottom of this, stat!

I asked my new twitter friend, Joanna, who is actually based in England, the scoop on these conkers that she mentioned.  She shot me back a couple of links.  Come to find out conkers are the nuts that come from horse-chestnut trees.  These trees are mostly native to specific parts of Europe (which explains why I had never heard of them).  It has long been believed that if you leave conkers around your doors and window sills, they act as a natural deterrent to spiders.  While there has been no scientific evidence that conkers are effective form of defense, some believe that the conkers need to be a fresh batch in order to give off the appropriate odor to do their job.

Here in America there’s an old saying that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.”  While speaking to The Telegraph, Stuart Hine of the Natural History Museum in England gives us his own ryhme…

“Conkers does ryhme with bonkers!”