Palmetto Bug Crawls Into Woman’s Ear
Palmetto bug
The Palmetto bug. If you live in Florida, you can probably already see it in your mind’s eye. The cockroach known as the palmetto bug is the American Cockroach. These little monsters are dark brown, large, and winged. They have markings that resemble sunglasses, despite being very uncool.
The palmetto bug prefers damp conditions and often found in sewers, woodpiles, and mulch. Like moths, you can see these things flying into lights. But, they’re too tough to die from the impact or heat. Imagine you’re standing outside, and one of these zips right into your head? Creepy, right?
Well, a Florida woman named Katie Holley and her husband moved down to Florida about a year ago. And not long after they’d have a run in with our famous and special roach. The palmetto bug. However, if you think you can imagine how bad it went from them, it’s worse than even that.
After consistently spotting the bugs around her house, Holley called an exterminator and had the house sprayed every three months. “For her peace of mind,” according to Holley.
Sleeping
But one night as she was sleeping, she woke up abruptly. She had a cold, weird feeling in her ear. Similar to if you had an ice cube shoved in there. And when she went to the bathroom, she checked it with a cotton swab. Her night went from bad to worse when she felt something moving.
“When I pulled the cotton swab out, there were two dark brown, skinny pieces stuck to the tip. Moments later, I realized that they were legs. LEGS,” Holley said to Self Magazine.
Naturally, this caused her to panic. She ran to her husband and asked for help. But he was only able to pull out two of the bug’s legs as it burrowed further into her ear. They ran to the E.R. at about two in the morning. The doctor used lidocaine to number her ear and kill the palmetto bug. You can imagine how horrible this must have been.
After, the doctor used the tweezers to take the roach out. He came up with a few pieces that he showed the family on a napkin.
A week later she went to a family physician to renew her daily medication and told the doctor that she was still having discomfort in her ear and had some hearing loss–thinking it could just be a buildup of wax.
When the doctor flushed out her ear and used an instrument to check inside, there wasn’t any wax buildup.
Instead, she saw a spiky insect leg.
The doctor was able to pull out six more pieces of the bug’s carcass but told Holley that there could still be more pieces of the bug inside. So the doctor made an emergency appointment with an ENT for Holley the next day.
Finally, the doctor pulled out the entire head, upper torso, more limbs, and the antennae.
Don’t end up like Holley. If you have a palmetto bug problem, please contact a pest control specialist. One that uses a natural remedy, preferably, since roundup and other chemical pesticides’ safety are now called into question.