A Kiwi man was horrified to discover what he thought was just a blocked ear actually turned out to be a cockroach inside it.
Zane Wedding, of Auckland, has spoken of waking up in the middle of the night with a blocked ear on Friday - thinking it was just water.
"I had been swimming that day so that's all I thought it was," he told RNZ's Morning Report.
When the blockage still hadn't disappeared on Saturday morning, Wedding took himself to a doctor. When the doctor took a look inside the ear, he couldn't see anything.
The doctor flushed the ear out, telling Wedding the problem would fix itself.
By Tuesday, Wedding's ear was still blocked and it became apparent the issue was more serious - so he made a trip to an ear specialist.
"They checked… my left ear and, in an instant, she goes, 'Oh my god' and that's when I was like, 'Oh, what's happened?'
"She was like, 'Hey, uh, I think you've got an insect in your ear," Wedding told Morning Report.
The ear specialist then spent a few minutes trying to remove the insect - eventually pulling it out with a set of tweezers, he said.
He told RNZ it made him feel sick.
"As soon as she pulled it free of my eardrum I felt a pop… That water sloshing around in my ear was probably the legs of the cockroach beating on my eardrum.
"I was so thankful to have it removed - it was instant relief," Wedding said.
