A BUG (MOTH) IN HER EAR

Last night, my creator, Carolyn, came up with a new definition for the phrase “You have a bug in your ear!”

It happened at 3:15 a.m. She was trying to sleep, laying on her side, with her cat Honey laying on her shoulder and purring loudly in her ear. Suddenly, she jumped up, startling Honey and dumping her off the bed. Something was in her EAR!

Not knowing what else to do, she yelled for her husband, Monte. Startled, he sat up and swiped at his eyes.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I’ve got a BUG in my ear!” she said.

“Well, tell me, what do you have to tell me?”

“NO,” she yelled. “I have a BUG in my ear! How do I get it out?”

Monte was catching on. He turned her head to where the light shone in her ear, and even got a flashlight.

“Sit still,” he said.

“”I can’t,” she said, while jumping about, trying to knock the insect out of her ear.

He persisted with the flashlight, finally concluding he couldn’t see anything. Oftentimes, if he can’t “see” something, he doesn’t believe it exists. Carolyn’s strange behavior, her jumping about and emitting quiet yelps, proved to him that irregardless of whether he could see something or not, I was reporting a true incident.

“Get me a Q-tip,” he suggested.

“NO WAY,” Carolyn responded. “That will only push the insect further inward.”

“We can flood it out with water.”

“No, no one is playing around with my ears. Take me to the ambulance station to see if the medics can help.”

He quickly dressed and collected his keys and folders. Perhaps, he said, they would end up at the hospital, where he could spend his waiting time preparing for a work presentation.

The insect was still fluttering and crawling about Carolyn’s ears as the car left the driveway. Monte checked to see if their daughter, a former paramedic, was up getting ready for work but it was too early and Carolyn wouldn’t let him wake her because she had to drive over Laurel Mountain for an early start to work.

At the ambulance garage the medic said “Proceed to the emergency room.”

As they drove down the highway the insect quieted down to the extent that Carolyn thought it had met its demise. Now she had a DEAD insect in her ear.

However, that poor insect must have just tired himself out with all his desperate fluttering. If you think Carolyn was skitterish, how do you think this trapped insect felt?

He was fighting for his life…! So after short rests he resumed his fluttering again, startling Carolyn so she yelped and jumped.

“WHAT’S WRONG?” Monte asked the first and second incidents.

“The bug is fluttering again.”

“Well, stop that.”

“It’s startling me,” Carolyn retorted. “How do you think YOU’D react if a bug was dancing in YOUR ear? You’ll just have to grin and bear it.”

Carolyn walked in the emergency room and stood before the intake secretary.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m embarrassed to tell you, but I have a BUG in my ear,” she laughed. “And it needs to be gotten out NOW. Don’t ask me any questions now---I’ll answer them after the insect is OUT!”

Two medical persons arrived and took her back to a room.

“I’m not answering any questions until this bug is removed,” Carolyn stated emphatically, but humorously and laughingly. You see, she could see the humor in the situation even while the bug was bugging her (no pun intended, of course).

Carolyn asked the nurses if they really needed to take her temperature and blood pressure and have her meds list just to remove the bug. “Yes,” was the answer.

The staff member looked in her ear with a special light, and acknowledged, after probing about for a while, that there was a SMALL bug in there, perhaps a mosquito.

“It’s bigger than that,” Carolyn said, but didn’t pursue the argument. The evidence would prove she was right.

The doctor came in and could find no sign of the insect, but the staff member said “Surely it is there. I saw it.”

Carolyn said, “It’s there, it still flutters but more weakly now, and you need to get it out! NOW!”

The doctor told her they were going to put a numbing agent in the ear to still the bugger, and then flush it out with water. So he did. And it was what Carolyn said it was---a small bug but nevertheless a MOTH.

While they were treating Carolyn, the doctor told her that they’d had patients come to the emergency room with bizarre behavior---running about, screaming, VERY physically agitated---to the point that they installed them in a special room for “crazies” (not their word, but mine). “Aha,” Carolyn told Monte, “you should be grateful all I did was jerk when startled and yelp quietly.”

The doctor also said insects patient’s ears is a common problem. One man had a Japanese beetle in his. A common insect found in the ears is the COCKROACH!

Hey, that’s ME! I’ve lost many a relative in the same situation. I recall once reading about two friends who crawled into the ears of a human at the same time---that is, each took an ear. They must have been hungry, tempted by the human’s excessive earwax, scrumptious dining. The man went to an emergency room where the medical staff tried to determine the best way to remove my friends, since they had two ears to work with. I cannot recall which way proved most effective for the human, but I do know that friends who enter ears by daring or error DO NOT SURVIVE.

They meet the same fate that the moth, floating in the water after being flushed out of Carolyn’s ear, did.

So fellow cockroaches, if you learn one thing from this story, it’s STAY AWAY FROM HUMAN EARS! It’s like the humans say: if it’s tempting and yummy to eat, it’s dangerous for you.

Hmmm, this may be a wasted story from the viewpoint of the cockroach: very few of us can READ---or WRITE---I guess I’ll have to go spread the word by visiting various cockroach haunts. See ya’!   

Doodleoot for now.  Cochran