This is the stomach-churning moment when doctors in Thailand found a live tick crawling inside a woman’s ear.
The 50-year old patient had been complaining to medics about ‘ringing noises’ and a ‘strange sensation’, which they put down to tinnitus.
Hospital workers examined the woman, but were shocked to find the insect buried deep into her ear canal.
Using a micro-suction tube they managed to successfully remove the bug, which they measured at a skin-crawling 6 millimetres.
The lady said that she had ‘many dogs at home’ who spend their time outside, ‘running in the fields and swimming in the canals’, before letting them sleep in her bed.
Doctor Piradee Chanmonthon, 37, said the lady narrowly missed a bigger problem. He said: ‘Luckily the tick didn’t lay any eggs or embedded in her ear because that would take longer to remove and might have involved an operation.