Venomous Brown Recluse Spider Hides In Kansas City Woman’s Ear

KANSAS CITY, MO — Susie Torres is sleeping with cotton balls in her ears now. You might, too, if you went to the doctor’s office with a fairly ordinary complaint and learned a brown recluse spider was holed up in your ear.

The Kansas City, Missouri, woman went to the doctor for treatment because she thought she had water in her left ear. The medical assistant took a look, rushed out the door and brought in backup.

The assistant did think an insect — an ordinary, run-of-the-mill pest — might be causing Torres’ trouble.

She didn’t panic — that is until the medical assistant came back in the examination room.

“She ... told me it was a spider,” Torres told news station KSHB. “They had a few tools and worked their magic and got it out.”

Doctors told Torres later she had a brown recluse spider in her ear. It didn’t bite her — which is fortunate because brown recluse spiders are one of two venomous spiders found in the United States. The other is black widow spider.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the venom of brown recluse spiders can cause a severe lesion that can destroy skin, requiring medical attention.

Brown recluse spiders are, as the name suggests, reclusive and bites are rare. But, given where the spider was hiding, it could easily have bitten the woman. The CDC says that particular type of spider “cannot bite humans without some form of counter pressure, for example through unintentional contact that traps the spider against the skin.”

Brown recluse spiders, sometimes called violin or fiddleback spiders because of their unique markings, are found in the Midwest and south-central United States, from Nebraska to Ohio at the northern edge of its range to Texas to Florida at south.

Torres isn’t taking any chances. She doesn’t have earplugs, so that’s why she armored her ears with cotton balls.

“I’m pretty terrified of spiders,” Torres told KSHB.