The next time you have an itch you can't scratch, count yourself lucky it's not a cricket stirring in an orifice. One man, thought to be from India, arrived at the doctors to find his itchy ear discomfort was actually triggered by a 3-inch live cricket buried inside his ear canal. Doctors at the South Zone ENT Research Centre in Viluppuram, Tamil Nadu, India, performed and recorded the stomach-turning procedure on the unidentified man, giving us an inside look of the insect twitching in the patient’s ear.

In the video, the doctor begins to carefully remove the Indian house cricket with tiny tweezers to pinch the bug and pull it out of the ear. The narrow tweezers were then retrieved by the doctor as he uses them to gently pry the cricket from its temporary shelter. This procedure ensured the doctor would not further bury the moving insect. The video ends with the doctor placing the cricket against the man’s ear to show just how big the creature is. followed by the cricket crawling on a piece of paper.

Michael Sweet, lecturer at the University of Derby, an expert on invertebrate biology, told the Daily Star Online: “These critters are known to be an invasive species, appearing all over the globe. They like warm countries and hide during the day. It is likely this cricket crawled into the man's ear while he was sleeping and was just hiding there until night came around.”

The unidentified patient was readily able to identify his discomfort due to the sensitivity in the skin in the ear canal and the ear drum. Redness, swelling, or discharge in the form of blood, inflammatory fluid, or pus are common signs of ear injuries. In extreme cases, according to Medline Plus, dizziness, nausea, and vomiting, or loss of balance can occur due to inflammation in the ear or the buildup of pressure on the eardrum. Although the patient did not suffer any severe side effect, Sweet added: "[I]t could possibly have done some damage to the inner-ear, which would have resulted in temporary balance and hearing issues."

Unfortunately, this is not the first case of someone being a victim of crawling objects in ears. Earlier this year, a Taiwanese woman discovered larva living inside her ear after complaining from an earache, Medical Daily reported. Doctors removed the woman’s hearing aid to find the bloody fluid accumulated in her ear was caused by the living larva. The skin over the floor of the auditory canal, which is close to the eardrum, was eroded.

It is common for bugs and other animals to infest human body parts, with cockroaches being the most common type of bug to infest human ears. Just like the Indian house cricket, cockroaches tend to get into the ear when the patient sleeps. “They tend to run toward small, dark places, which fit the description of the ear,” Dr. Richard Nelson, an emergency medicine physician at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, told LiveScience. Doctors usually use foreceps, or an irrigation technique with water or saline, to remove insects from the ear.

Patients who suspect having a foreign body in the ear are advised to see a doctor urgently if they have inflammation, swelling, fever, discharge, bleeding, or increasing pain.