Doctors had to surgically remove a 0.8 inch cockroach from a man's ear after it crawled inside while he was asleep, according to Australian media reports Friday.
Hendrik Helmer told the state-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he had unsuccessfully tried to suck out the insect using his vacuum cleaner.
"I was hoping it wasn't a poisonous spider. I was hoping it didn't bite me," he said.
Having been woken in the early hours of Wednesday morning by an excruciating pain in the side of his head, Helmer convinced his roommate to drive him to the hospital near their home in Darwin, in northern Australia.
The doctor put olive oil into Helmer's ear but that merely drove the cockroach down further. After 10 minutes the creature began to die so the doctor pulled it out with forceps.
Helmer said his friends were so concerned by his experience that they had started going to bed wearing headphones, Sky News reported.
