Attack of Mothra Jr.

It's Sunday, July 11, 2010, 3:30 a.m. I just got home from the ER. Did I break a bone? Cut myself badly? Was I in a car accident? No. None of these things. Only my strange luck would end me up in the ER for 5 hours on a humid July night for this particular reason. Let's start from the beginning...

I got home from work around 9:45 p.m. and decided to take a quick dip in my pool to cool off. It was dark, so I turned on the light on my front porch in order to see enough to walk out to the pool – something I don't often do because any outside light at night attracts swarms of insects. And it is something I will never do again. I was in the pool for 5 minutes, max. I got out, toweled myself off, and headed back to the porch. Sure enough, there was already a swarm of bugs around the light. It's ridiculous, really. I timed it once – 15 seconds from when I turned on the light until the first bug made its way to the porch.

Amongst these insects, like always, were a good number of moths. I hate moths. Not as much as I hate spiders or earwigs, but I hate them. Especially the big ones. I hate their gross, pulsating abdomens, and their dust covered wings, and their oh-so-annoying need to get as close as possible to anything illuminated, buzzing and flapping chaotically, bashing their nasty little bodies against whatever is encasing the light source. One of these beasties was exceptionally large. I've definitely seen larger, but this sucker was at least an inch long. Not so much Mothra, but maybe Mothra Jr. I only had a few seconds to study Mothra Jr., because after that she would end up in a place not meant for moth habitation. I wouldn't see her for quite a while after that, and when I did, she would be but a shell of her former self.

Not wanting to let Mothra Jr. into the house, I did what I usually do and gave her a good swat before opening the door and darting inside. She didn't like this much. The next thing I remember seeing was her fluttering body flying towards the left side of my head. And then I felt her dusty wings flapping against my ear. I instinctively went to swat her away, but the laws of physics and geometry were not on my side at this fateful moment. As my hand cleared my ear, I suddenly realized that I had not brushed Mothra Jr.'s disgustingness away from my head, I had in fact pushed her inside of it. And pushed her in good.


I later realized that I would have much rather Mothra Jr. enter my mouth and then my esophagus and then my stomach to be cruelly digested by enzymes and acids. At least then she would pass harmlessly through my system. But instead, she ended up deep inside my ear, which is essentially a trap for any creature her size (see diagram). Had Mothra Jr. been smaller, she might have found her way out on her own, or I might have been able to kill and flush her out myself. And if she had been larger, she wouldn't have fit inside at all. But Mothra Jr. was the perfect size to fit snugly inside my the inner depths of my ear.

So naturally, I freaked out. I ran inside and my first thought (at this point I didn't know just how far Mothra Jr. had traveled inside my ear) was to shake my head violently as though she was like a puddle of water that I have easily shaken out of my ear in the past. This didn't work. Next, I ran into the bathroom and stuck my head under the tub sink, thinking maybe I could splash water into my ear and flush her out. This had no effect either. At this point, I ran into the kitchen and grabbed a flashlight. I returned to the bathroom and positioned my medicine cabinet mirror in a way that I could use my vanity as a counter mirror. I shined the light into my ear, trying to get the best field of view possible. I looked as deep into my ear as I was able without medical instruments, and I couldn't see anything.

Keep in mind that all this time, Mothra Jr. was freaking out as well. I was in a state of panic, and I would realize until later just how deafening, distracting and altogether uncomfortable her thrashing was, but I was definitely aware of a little creature moving – or trying to move – inside my head. She didn't want to be in there any more than I wanted her to be. And I had to get her out. Like I said before, if I had swallowed her, it would be no big deal. But if I didn't get her out, she would be there forever. At least it seemed so at the time.

This was the point that I decided to do something that might have made things worse. I grabbed a box of Q-tips. If she wasn't coming out on her own, I was going to dig her out. Bad idea. Later on the nurse who checked me in said that the water flushing was a good idea, the Q-tips might have pushed it in further, however.

Seeing this wasn't working, I suddenly remembered my mother telling me that she often soaked vegetables from her garden in salt water to coax out possible insect invaders. Perfect. I had an insect in my ear, and I wanted nothing but to coax it out. So I ran into the kitchen and filled a basin with water. Seeing that the only salt dispenser I had was a grinder, I opted for the container of epsom salts on my fridge. Epsom salt water in my ear did no good either.

At this point, the never-ending fluttering in my ear was beginning to drive me nuts. I knew I wasn't going to get Mothra Jr. out of my ear myself, I knew I was destined to visit the ER, but I wanted her to die. I wanted her fluttering to stop. It was like a jackhammer in my head every time she flapped her wings – or what was left of them. So my next thought was peroxide. Surely peroxide would kill her. I would pour peroxide into my ear and call my mother to have her take me to the ER. So a dose of the old HP went into my ear, head tilted, I tried to calm myself, and called my mom.

"Hello," answered my mother.

"Hi," I said, trying not to sound too shocked, fearing her over-reaction to the situation.

"How are you?" she asked.

"Not so great. There is a moth stuck in my ear." I realized that as I spoke these words, the panic was very evident in my voice. I didn't have to ask the next question.

"What? I'll be right there," she said, and hung up the phone.

Sweet. My mom was on the way – luckily she lives only a few minutes away now – I would have to convince her to take me to the ER, she would try and fix the problem herself. After a few more doses of peroxide, and sure that I had murdered Mothra Jr., my mother arrived. As predicted, she had a pair of tweezers with her. I told her we had to go to the ER, but she insisted on "taking a look" first. Two seconds into her examination, she decided we had better go to the ER. So off to Bridgton Hospital we went.

I will skip the time consuming check-in, waiting room, sitting in the exam room waiting for the good doc to show up. I waited about 2 hours until Dr. Allison Brewer showed up in my room. During this wait, I discovered that Mothra Jr. was indeed still alive. Anytime I moved my head too much, or coughed, or talked too loud, or flushed a toilet, she would make her presence know, flapping violently away inside my ear. And it wasn't just the flapping. I could hear her every biological move. Most times, it was like a bass drum hitting four quarter notes with a measure of break, and then all over again. I would later discover that she was pushed right up against my eardrum. And then there were the "flutters," massive bodily motion, probably her trying to exit the world of my ear. These were the most distracting and disturbing.

When Doc Brewer showed up, she said she'd try removing the alien invader with forceps. If this didn't work, she would flood my ears with some crap, the name of which I can't recall. This gunk would kill Mothra Jr. and also numb the insides of my ear. I told her I didn't care what she did, just to get this thing out of me. Her initial extraction attempt was a failure. It was strange, because it felt like she took the whole thing out. I actually said "Can I keep it?" when I felt a "pop" as she removed the forceps from my ear.

"Actually, I didn't get any of it there," she said, much to my dismay.

From there, we moved on to the "flood your ears with this gunk that will kill Mothra Jr. and numb your ear" portion of treatment. I was on fire with killing the little bitch, that's all I had really wanted for the past 2 hours. Her occasional – but brain numbing – flutterings were really starting to get to me.

So I turned on my side and she poured a bunch of shit in my ear. What came next was very strange. About a minute in, the bass drum hits sped up, and then I heard what sounded like a hungry, rumbling stomach. From there, I heard the sound of faint wind, what you might hear when holding your ear to a seashell. And then, Mothra Jr. was silent. She was dead. And I had witnessed the deathrattle of a moth. Right next to my eardrum.

Doc Brewer went away for a while, probably checking on other patients. When she returned, I told her that Mothra Jr. was definitely dead. She then went to work on extracting her. After a try with the forceps, she went to a suction machine. This thing felt like a vacuum was running inside of my head, but I didn't care, I just wanted the corpse of Mothra Jr. out of my body. 15 minutes and much poking and suctioning later, I had the remnants of Mothra Jr. in a plastic cup, which I kept as a trophy of our struggle (see picture, keep in mind this is minus abdomen and wings, and I took it with my crappy cell phone camera). Her wings left debris in my ear which a nurse flushed out with a saline bath. Doc Brewer came back to do a final check and told me that part of my inner ear was lacerated, she wasn't sure if it was from the moth or my Q-tip gold digging, but she said to keep an eye on it for any pain or discharge. I will.

So, that was my Saturday night / Sunday morning. This is an experience I hope to never go through again.