A doctor in Oregon flushed out the aching lughole of a nine-year-old boy to find two spiders had set up home inside his ear canal.

The Albany Democrat-Herald reports that one of the arachnids was still alive. Traumatised juvenile aural spider blockage victim Jesse Courtney said: "They were walking on my eardrum and I kept hearing this popping sound like Rice Krispies."

Jesse's mother Diane told the Democrat-Herald she thought the bugs had landed in his ear when he was helping her with gardening some a week earlier. "The dirt was really flying," the paper reports.

The first, dead, spider was flushed out with little difficulty, but doctors said the live arachnid took a second dousing.

Like any sane mother, Diane Courtney revealed: "My first thought was, I’m going to go home and bomb the house."

Happily, Ms Courtney decided not to napalm the family home, and has since taken the spider corpses to show off to amazed work colleagues. ®

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