Ok. Here you go. The worst thing ever. Here it is from the AP:

ALBANY, Oregon (AP) — These guys were not exactly Snap, Crackle and Pop.

What began as a faint popping in a 9-year-old boy’s ear — “like Rice Krispies” — ended up as an earache, and the doctor’s diagnosis was that a pair of spiders made a home in the ear.

“They were walking on my eardrums,” Jesse Courtney said.

One of the spiders was still alive after the doctor flushed the fourth-grader’s left ear canal. His mother, Diane Courtney, said her son insisted he kept hearing a faint popping in his ear — “like Rice Krispies.”

Dr. David Irvine said it looked like the boy had something in his ear when he examined him.

When he irrigated the ear, the first spider came out, dead. The other spider took a second dousing before it emerged, still alive. Both were about the size of a pencil eraser.

Jesse was given the spiders — now both dead — as a souvenir. He has taken them to school and his mother has taken them to work.

So there you have it. In the unlikely event that it is possible for me to ever sleep again, I will now be wearing ear plugs. THANKS A LOT ASSOCIATED PRESS! Assholes.

Feel creeped out? Well, let me try to balance out the terrible ear spider story by busting a popular spider myth. I got this from the Burke Museum’s website on a page called Spider Myths: Gulp!

Fact: This very widespread urban legend has no basis in fact. It exists in various forms; another common version is that you swallow an average of 20 in your lifetime. (At 4 per year, that would make a very short lifetime of 5 years…) A correspondent in Pennsylvania had heard a version that involved swallowing a pound of spiders (while sleeping) in one’s lifetime. (That would be over 20,000 average spiders, for a lifetime of 5,000 years at the 4 per year rate).

For a sleeping person to swallow even one live spider would involve so many highly unlikely circumstances that for practical purposes we can rule out the possibility. No such case is on formal record anywhere in scientific or medical literature. Since this page first appeared, I have heard from one person who found a small harmless spider hiding in her ear (which is possible), another who claimed to have had one in her nose (but had no evidence that it wasn’t already in her hanky), and one who claimed that when she was a young child a spider leg was found by her lips. But not one person has claimed that a spider entered his or her mouth.

THANK YOU BURKE MUSEUM! That has freaked me out since a friend mentioned it casually in a conversation once, not knowing my irrational fear of the little demonic beasts. WHEW. That’s a relief. Still though. Spiders in your ears? Horrible.