14 DAY TRIAL // When Katie Melua went to the doctors to complain about a scratching noise in one of her ears that just wouldn't go away, no one imagined the scenario described in the title. Since she's a singer and has to deal with loud music for longer periods of time than your average person, it was a safe bet to say that she had some sort of ear infection.
But when the ear doctor took a peek into the musician's ear to see what was happening there, he was taken aback when a small spider looked back at him through the small camera lens he had inserted. Both shocked and relieved that her scratching wasn't due to an early onset of tinnitus, Melua shared the image of the spider on her social media.
The spider must have gotten in her ear when she put on a set of old headphones
She captioned the image with an explanation as to how the spider might have gotten in her ear. In her opinion, the spider must have resided in an old pair of headphones she used and must have crawled in her ear canal without her noticing.
“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,” Melua wrote on her Instagram page, as fans shuddered with disgust.
She added with some weird sense of pride, “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. It was no hassle at all, apart from the occasional shuffling noises.”
The news was confirmed by Katie's spokesperson, who added the explanation that the doctor was taken aback by the find, since he'd never had to remove a live spider, as all of the insects he extracted had been dead.
Katie took the spider home and released it later in her garden
We also find out that Katie took the small spider home in the test tube and later released it in her garden, proving that there were no hard feelings between her and the insect and that she didn't mind the very rude body invasion.
In fact, the singer was more than happy with her spider because it meant that she wasn't in fact losing her hearing. As you might imagine, hearing is very important for a person making their living as a musician, so for Katie is was a huge burden off her shoulders to know that her hearing was just fine, though a little “buggy.”
Two things to remember from this weird story: one is that Katie Melua does not suffer from arachnophobia, and the other one is to always check headphones before putting them in your ears, particularly if you live in warmer countries, where small spiders often come into close contact with people.
A photo posted by Katie Melua (@katiemeluaofficial) on Oct 10, 2014 at 2:10pm PDT
A photo posted by Katie Melua (@katiemeluaofficial) on Oct 10, 2014 at 2:14pm PDT