You've heard the expression "put a bug in his ear" but what's this ???

ALBANY, ORE. — These invaders might seem to fit somewhere between Spider-Man and Snap, Crackle and Pop, but they're real.

What began as a faint popping in a 9-year-old boy's ear that he said sounded "like Rice Krispies" ended up as an earache, and the doctor's diagnosis was that a pair of spiders had made a home in the ear.

"They were walking on my eardrums," Jesse Courtney said.

Dr. David Irvine said he flushed the boy's left ear canal and a dead spider came out.

The boy's mother, Diane Courtney, said her son insisted he still heard a faint popping.

After a second dousing, the second spider emerged — alive. Both were about the size of a pencil eraser.

Jesse was given the spiders — now both dead — as a souvenir.
Jesse Courtney, 9, displays the two spiders that where removed from his ear, Friday, May 4, 2007, at his home in Albany, Ore. (AP Photo/The Albany Democrat-Herald, David Patton)