There Was a Moth. In My Ear.

Moth In Spider's Web
Originally uploaded by Nathan Moody.

Last night I was sitting in an internet cafe on Second Avenue and Seventh Street. I was about to leave when a moth started buzzing around me. I shooshed it away a few times, which seemed to make it very angry. The next thing I knew it zoomed right into my ear.

I've been around for almost 29 years now and I've never heard of this happening. But when a moth flies into your head, not only do you hear it buzzing around in there, but you feel its wings fluttering in your ear canal. It's absolutely freakish. I started twitching and freaking out, so much so that the guy at the computer next to me got up and left.

I walked home thinking that if I hopped in the shower I could drown the thing out with water. After ten minutes of constant water in my ear, the moth was still in there. I had no choice but to go to the emergency room.

It wasn't very busy at Beth Israel, so I was taken rght away. I was assigned to a doc who I'll call Dr. David who couldn't have been much older than me. He poured some chemical in my ear that would kill the moth and then he planned to flush it out with water. Let me tell you: There is nothing more uncomfortable than feeling a moth die in your ear. If I was freaking out, I can't imagine how that moth felt.

Dr. David came back into the room and flushed the bugger out. I was expecting some huge, Silence of the Lambs creature, but it was tiny! Like, pinky finger nail tiny. Dr. David also told me that he's taken cockroaches out of people's ear before. So maybe my moth wasn't so bad.

Here's the rub: Dr. David told me that if I hadn't come in to have the moth removed, it would likely have died in my ear and maybe gotten infected. Crazy.

Thanks, Dr. David! And everyone at Beth Israel for taking that moth out of my head.