The summer before fifth grade, I had walked home from my neighbors house after a night full of swimming and s'mores. I was so exhausted from the busy evening that I crawled right in bed with my mom, who was watching TV. Just as I was about to fall asleep I hear the loudest sound I have ever heard in my life. A deafening, squeaking noise got me immediately out of bed, panicking and screaming. (At this point the beetle was just crawling through my ear and no damage had been done yet.)

My mom jumped up with me, with no clue what was going on. When she saw me holding onto my ear and went into full super-mom mode. My dad was at work in the ER that night so he was not there to help. My mom yelled for both of my brothers and sent one to get the doctor who lived across the street and the other to get the otoscope from my dads cabinet. The doctor came over to help and just as he was preparing to check my ear, blood poured everywhere. The doctor was unable to tell what was going on so I held a towel to my ear and got in the car to head to the hospital.

We arrived in dad's emergency room and even he agreed there is too much blood to see what was happening. He knew it was either a busted ear drum or that it had been eaten by a bug, so he flushed it out and put medicine in that would kill the bug. Each day following this night my dad would flush my ear with water until a week later when he finally saw the cause of the incident. First a leg flushed out, then another, then the body of the beetle. Gross, I know.

Fortunately, eardrums grow back, so it is back to normal, but to this day I still cover my ears when a bug flies by my head!