Darwin resident Hendrik Helmer knew that an insect had crawled inside his ear when woke up in great pain in the wee hours of the morning on Wednesday. He just never thought that he would find a 2cm cockroach.

According to Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Mr Helmer was sleeping when he felt a sharp pain in his right ear around 2:30 am on Wednesday. His first thought was that an insect of some type crawled inside his ear and gave him pain so overwhelming that he was knocked down to the ground when he tried to stand up.

“I was hoping it wasn’t a poisonous spider. I was hoping it didn’t bite me,” he told ABC.

He tried to suck it out with a vacuum cleaner, and force it to scurry out of his body by squirting water down his ear, but his actions had angered the pest instead.

He asked his flatmate to take him to the Royal Darwin Hospital when the pain increased. He was then taken to a physician, who put olive oil down his ear canal, forcing the insect to crawl in deeper.

The insect began to die, though, allowing the doctor to pull it out from Mr Helmer’s ear with forceps.

“She said, ‘you know how I said a little cockroach? That may have been an underestimate,’” Mr Helmer recounted the doctor’s words, continuing, “They said they had never pulled an insect this large out of someone’s ear.”

The cockroach measured two centimetres long.

Mr Helmer claimed that he does not have a cockroach problem at home so there’s no need for extermination. He also doesn’t plan to take precautions against another possible roach breach of his ears.

His friends, however, were still shaken up with his ordeal that they told him that they have begun sleeping with earplugs or headphones on.

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