The “Water” In this Woman’s Ear Turned Out to Be a Venomous Brown Recluse Spider
Missouri woman Susie Torres thought she had water in her ear, but a medical team quickly discovered a spider inside of it.
They extracted a dime-sized, venomous brown recluse spider from her left ear. Torres luckily did not receive a bite.
Brown recluse spiders, most commonly found in Midwestern and southern states, can cause serious bites that immediate require medical attention.
When Susie Torres heard popping and swishing sounds in her left ear, she simply thought she had some water sloshing around in there.
“I woke up Tuesday hearing a bunch of swooshing and water in my left ear. It was like when you went swimming and you have all of that water in your ear,” Torres told local station Fox4 Kansas City. Thinking it was just a side effect of an allergy shot, she went to the doctor after work, but what the medical assistant found next was the stuff of nightmares.
After two more nurses, three medical students, and a doctor took a closer look, they told Torres she had a spider in her ear, CNN reports. Flushing her ear with water didn’t seem to do much, so they decided to try and pull it out. “Seeing the instruments they were going to put in my ear started to make me panic,” she said.
But what they fished out (in one piece) wasn’t your harmless daddy long-legs—it was a dime-sized, venomous brown recluse spider, which is most commonly found in the Midwest and southern states, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“The brown recluse spider cannot bite humans without some form of counter pressure, for example, through unintentional contact that traps the spider against the skin,” the CDC site states. However, a bite will cause a small white blister and “the venom of a brown recluse can cause a severe lesion by destroying skin tissue (skin necrosis). This skin lesion will require professional medical attention.”
“The nurses said it was dead, but they might’ve just said that so I wouldn’t freak out,” Torres told CNN.
Brown recluse spiders are most often found in workplaces that are dry, secluded, and sheltered, the CDC says. These locations typically have structures like logs or piles of rocks or leaves in the area. However, if one of these creepy crawlers makes its way into your home, they like to camp out in dark closets, attics, or even shoes.
Torres believes the spider may have crawled into her ear while she was sleeping, so now she’s extra careful and wears ear plugs.
“I went and put some cotton balls in my ears last night. I’m shaking off my clothes, and I don’t put my purse on the floor,” she told Fox4. “I’m a little more cautious.”
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