A terrified girl had to have a cockroach plucked from her ear canal after the insect crawled inside during an afternoon nap.
The six-year-old noticed a strange tingling sensation as she slept and her horrified mum made the worrying discovery soon after.
The incident took place in the city of Shenzhen in the south-eastern Chinese province of Guangdong last week.
According to local media, the young girl noticed an odd feeling in her ear after having an afternoon sleep and her mother checked to see what the issue was.
The stunned parent then saw a live cockroach in one of her daughter’s ear canals - and had to think fast.
She quickly decided against trying to remove the creature herself and jumped in her car and headed for help.
The woman took her daughter to a nearby medical centre and an ear doctor observed a two-centimetre-long cockroach burrowing its way towards the girl’s eardrum with an otoscope.
The doctor poured a medical solution into the child’s ear to kill the insect.
Eventually, they safely removed it from her ear canal as the family breathed a huge sigh of relief.
The local authorities reminded residents to always go to hospital if a foreign object or live insect enters an ear.
Experts say you must not try to deal with the problem yourself. in such situations.
Someone trying to remove an insect without medical attention could cause it to burrow deeper inside, possibly damaging the eardrum and causing a series of complications.
The girl is said to be recovering at home after her traumatic ordeal.
