/ 11 January 2006

Spider nests in woman’s ear for 27 days

A spider that nested in the ear of a Swedish woman was discovered and removed alive after 27 days, Swedish tabloid Expressen reported on Wednesday.

The black spider, ”the size of a thumbnail”, crept into the woman’s ear while she was sleeping and went undiscovered for almost a month, the paper said.

The woman, whose name was not disclosed, told the paper that she at first experienced ”a slight loss of hearing” and assumed that she had a build-up of wax.

But when she heard ”a scratching sound” in her ear she decided to go to the pharmacy to buy a cleanser to wash out her ear cavity.

When she did so, the spider was flushed out alive and crawled away.

The woman recalled having seen a spider on her bed in November, 27 days earlier. — Sapa-AFP