I HATE earwigs. With a passion. Never more so than last year when I found one in my headphones as I was wearing them. Since then, I have checked my headphones religiously for any manner of creepy crawly. The other night was no different. I checked them visually and then ran my finger around the inside, all clear I thought….
IT HAPPENED AGAIN!!!!!
I’m sitting there weaving and minding my own business when I feel something tickling my ear, quite innocently I go to scratch it when suddenly I remembered this feeling from before. Cue, lightning speed removal of headphones! This time (whilst silently screaming and hyperventilating) I decided to take photos as proof. Not easy considering how much my hands were shaking.
Photos done, I moved to the table where I had my hammer at the ready, I tried to shake it out but it had clearly decided my headphone was paradise and it wasn’t going to leave without a fight. Shouting at it and monumental banging of headphone on table had no effect and so I had to chase it out with an empty pirn.
Then it was hammer time…
Thanks to a good friend and her bright idea, I now have a new HED (Headphone/Earwig Deterrent) system in place. So far so good, no earwigs tickling my ear! Being a Harris Tweed weaver is not an easy job – keep an eye out for a documentary detailing the dangers we face on a regular basis!
I read this and got goose pimples ! I hate earwigs, couldn’t kill one, but this is the only creepy crawly that makes me scream and run away – I got nipped by one when I was a kid, and the trauma is still with me 🙂
They’re horrible things!!
Sept. 5th, 2025
An earwig spoiled a perfectly good evening and almost drove me to the Emergency Room.
I was sitting on my couch, chilling and watching a documentary with my wife. Suddenly, I heard bizarre scratching sounds in my right ear, and next, incredible pain accompanying the scratching sounds. I turned my head to the right and felt as if liquid was draining from my ear, which may or may not have been real. The scratching sounds started to sound more like waves and the pain continued coming in waves. My wife grabbed a flashlight (torch) and looked into my ear upon my request. She saw nothing at first look. We prepared to go to the emergency room because we had no idea what was going on with my ear. I asked her to look again with the light. She said, there’s something in there. We went to the bathroom and prepared to try and wash the thing out. While prepping an eyedropper with water, the thing decided to exit my ear canal and I saw it on my outer ear, flicked my ear, and the frickin’ earwig dropped into our bathroom sink. We killed it and preserved it in rubbing alcohol.
May this never happen to you. It supposedly is exceedingly rare. I am in my 60’s, an outdoorsman, and this never happened before.
After this experience, I suspect torturers would drop earwigs into their victim’s ears, though this is pure speculation on my part, and perhaps that’s how they came to be called earwigs. Just a guess.
That’s just opened up a whole new fear of it actually getting in there!