A web designer who phoned in sick with vertigo after waking up feeling dizzy and with a faint scratching sound in his head was horrified to discover a spider had burrowed inside his ear overnight.

Self-professed arachnophobe Liam Gomez, 27, said he had disturbed a nest full of hatchlings shortly before going to sleep on October 8.

He initially applied olive oil to try and soothe the tickling sensation before investigating with a cotton bud.

But when it came back out with a tiny leg hanging off it Liam found himself confronted with his worst nightmare.

Liam, from Folkestone in Kent, described his relief ‘just to get the bloody thing out of me’ and regain his hearing after eventually extracting the spider piece by piece using a hairpin.

He said: ‘I arrived home from work on Tuesday evening to discover a spider’s nest above my front door, with lots of hatchlings.

‘So I swept them away with a broom, and went to bed. The next morning, I woke with blocked ears and vertigo, so I called in sick to work.

‘I put a couple of drops of olive oil in my ears and decided to go back to sleep for a bit – I could feel tickling in my ear, but put it down to the oil.

‘When I woke up a couple of hours later, I could still feel the sensation, but also hear a faint scratching sound, so I decided to investigate with a cotton bud.

‘It came out clean, apart from a single leg. It was at that point I thought “Oh god, I know what that means”.

‘I used a hairpin and the cotton bud to retrieve the spider, making sure to count the legs coming out, then made sure to give my ear a good clean.

‘Total sod’s law as I’m an arachnophobe – absolute nightmare. And the irony is I’m a web designer for a living.’

Afterwards Liam joked that the bug might have ‘snuck’ into his ear ‘as some sort of revenge mission’ after he cleared their nest.

‘I didn’t think to check if it was female,’ he added.

‘I’m hoping it was male, because I’m really hoping it didn’t have to chance to lay eggs.’

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