FIND OUT HOW A HORRIFIED LADY DISCOVERED THAT A SPIDER HAS BEEN LIVING INSIDE HER EAR...
Halloween week is traditionally a time for creepy tales, but pop star Katie Melua has a real-life horror story to top the lot.
The
30-year-old had been bugged by a scratching noise – and when she went
to the doctor’s to get it checked out, she discovered to her shock that
it was caused by a spider living inside her ear.
Even more alarmingly, it had been there for a week.
Grisly proof: Ms Melua posted this
image of her unwanted guest after it had been 'hoovered' out of her ear
by a hearing specialist
Melua
– who once released a single called Spider’s Web – believes the
creature had previously been living in a pair of earbud headphones she
recently used.
Once the doctor had removed the creature with a suction device, Ms Melua posted pictures of the unnerving find on Instagram.
She
wrote alongside the picture: ‘Basically I used these old in-ear
monitors to block out sound on a flight, a little spider must have been
in them and crawled inside my ear and stayed there for the week.
‘Though
the thing looked terrifying up-close on the doctor’s camera, once he
took him out (using a micro-hoover) it was pretty small, and now it’s in
this little test tube, alive and seemingly fine.’
And showing a surprising sang-froid, she added: ‘It was no hassle at all, apart from the occasional shuffling noises.’
A
spokeswoman for the star, best known for hits such as Nine Million
Bicycles and The Closest Thing To Crazy, said: ‘The ear specialist said
he’d never in his career taken out a live bug before. Plenty of dead
ones. When it was out it was pretty tiny.
‘Katie
kept it in the test tube and released it in her garden when she got
home. Apart from shuffling and random noises in her ear, the spider was
no bother for the entire week it lived there. She was relieved it was
what it was as she was worried she was losing her hearing.’
Miss Melua told her followers on Twitter and Instagram about the arachnid that was removed from her ear
The Spider's Web singer believes the creature crawled into her ear from the headphones she was using
The spider was identified as a member of the jumping spider family, which are found worldwide
The spider may look small, but it caused some discomfort for the Nine Million Bicycles singer
The
news comes two weeks after The Mail on Sunday reported how a London
family found a deadly Brazilian spider delivered with bananas in their
Waitrose shopping order.
Ms
Melua’s intruder was identified as a member of the salticidae – or
jumping spider – family. They are common worldwide, but in Britain they
rarely grow bigger than half an inch. Experts were, however, divided
about how the spider might have survived for so long.
Dr Tim Cockerill, who presents the BBC series Spider House, said: ‘I have never heard of this before.
‘But
lots of spiders don’t need to feed as frequently as you think. At this
time of year spiders have been eating flies and are very well fed so
they can survive weeks and weeks without food.
‘I don’t think there is anything in anybody’s ear that spiders would like to feed on.’
But
Professor Brian Moore, a hearing expert at Cambridge University, said:
‘Spiders like nice warm and slightly moist places and the ear can
provide that. We often have very small lice and bed mites which get into
our ear which a spider could live on.’
But
he had some relatively comforting news: ‘Eventually the spider would
come out and lay its eggs in a suitable place – and I don’t think that
would be the ear.’
In
2012, a woman in China discovered a spider had been living in her ear
canal for five days. Doctors retrieved it by pouring a salt solution
into her ear. But last year sculptor Graeme Lougher from West Sussex
wasn’t so lucky when doctors removed a live spider from his ear. The
creature immediately shot up his nose and his ordeal only ended when he
sneezed it out.
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