The Time a Moth Flew Into This Autistic’s Ear

Spoilers: this tale doesn’t end well for the moth

Photo by Max Kleinen on Unsplash

Allistics (non-autistics), I know how you get with too much rapid, repetitive motion; therefore, I will warn you from the get-go.

There’s an undiagnosed, autistic person in this story, a moth with a death wish, and well, you know what is going to happen from the title.

There’s going to be a lot of flapping in this story!!!!!

You have been warned.

It’s odd, but when I first saw the candle fly (adult wax moth) fluttering around my bedside lamp and repeatedly crashing into the lampshade, I knew it would end up in my ear. How I knew that was going to happen that night remains a mystery.

Over 20 years ago, I was back living in my parents’ house in the Virginia countryside after six months living in London with my then-boyfriend, now ex (It was relaxing to be out of the overwhelming city, but it was also boring).

Being an autistic who has trouble transitioning to sleep, falling asleep, and staying asleep, I was up late one night until about 3:00 a.m., until I decided I was sufficiently exhausted enough to go to bed.

While watching TV or reading a book, my usual routine before bed (I don’t think we knew about blue screens keeping people from sleeping well back then), this f**king moth was flying around my lamp and weirding me out.

I didn’t like its flapping self invading my space, and I didn’t know how to get it to go away. As I said, I remember having this odd thought to myself,

“That moth is going to end up in my ear.”

Thinking I was being stupid, I shook that thought off, and as I had done many times before with candle flies, I turned off the lamp and figured it would fly off once it realized the light that had disoriented it was gone.

Well, this particular moth’s navigation gear must have gotten badly scrambled because it kept hitting me in the arm and flapping around the lamp.

Shortly after that, mothertrucking moth flew into my mothertrucking ear.

I screamed bloody murder because I’m autistic and sensory-sensitive, and I don’t even like people touching my ears, least of all a moth with its fluttery, flapping wings beating against the inside of my ear canal.

Every time it would flutter in my ear, I would flap my hands in panic and go running around my room screaming and squirming, futilely willing it to fly back out.

My whopper of a freaking meltdown woke my seventy-year-old mother up, and she came into my room shouting at me to calm down. When has telling someone to calm down — least of all someone in sensory overload — ever helped anyone actually calm down?

I told her you don’t understand, I have a moth in my ear. For some odd reason, she didn’t think that was enough of a reason to lose my sh*t, but I am pretty sure most people would have had a little freakout with that moth stuck in their ear-hole.

My parents were from the heavily war-time traumatized Silent Generation, so one had to be on the point of death or serious, permanent injury for them to think it was necessary to go to the emergency room or hospital.

I am sure you can then imagine that my mother was completely rational and not at all infuriated with me that I wanted to go get this flapping and very much still-alive creature out of my super-sensitive ear.

She yelled for me to just shine a light in there. I replied No, that’s not going to work. So she reluctantly gathered herself up to take me to the hospital, basically bitching the entire ride there, telling me that it was ridiculous that I couldn’t just wait until morning.

I was like. Well, that’s easy to say because you’re not the one with a moth in your freaking ear. All the while, it’s still fluttering and flapping. I am also fluttering and flapping, and it is making me feel like I’m going to lose my f**king mind and vomit all over the car floor.

The hospital was 10 miles away, but it might as well have been 100 because it felt like it took us forever to get there. Then we got to the ER, where I didn’t want to walk up to the desk and tell the man what was wrong with me.

I was embarrassed to come to the ER for a moth that was stuck in my ear, and I am afraid of people at the best of times. This wasn’t the best of times. So I walked up very sheepishly and quietly mumbled…

I haf a marf een my ur.

And he’s like, I’m sorry. What did you say?

I ave a moff eend my air. He still couldn’t hear me.

He said it’s okay. Just say it.

Wringing my sweating hands, I told the male nurse I had a moth in my ear and its wings were flapping.

I started to feel panicked again, and seeing the fright on my face, the male nurse gently touched my shoulder and told me it was going to be okay as he walked me back to my ER room.

He said moths are no problem, we take them out all the time, and at least it wasn’t a Japanese beetle or a June bug. I was like Oh yeah and he said Yeah, they have those little sticky legs, and they get stuck in there, and we can’t get them out very easily.

Then I became horrified that maybe after they got this moth out of my ear, sometime soon, a beetle would fly into and get stuck in my ear. I wondered if that would be worse. It probably wouldn’t flap as much, but it would get horrendously stuck.

For what felt like half an hour before the doctor came in to remove the now-dead moth from my ear, I just sat there contemplating how to permanently plug up my ears for the rest of my life so no insect could ever get in there again.

Even though I wouldn’t have tolerated how that felt either.

The doctor used a curette tool and got the moth unstuck fairly quickly, but I just kept thinking about what the heck they do when you have a beetle in there. I never did get an answer.

I still don’t know to this day. I’m not sure I want to know. I’m thinking maybe water. Maybe they flood them with water like the 10th Doctor flooded the Racnoss babies in “The Runaway Bride”.

Although I doubt that method would work to dislodge them either.

Anyway, to this day, I have a type of PTSD with moths, and if a moth comes anywhere near me, I immediately cover my ears.

I can still appreciate a butterfly from afar, but I’d also run away if they came too close to me. The wings are too big and flappy.

You see, allistics, I understand that some creatures are unpredictable and can make one anxious. Sometimes flapping weirds me out, too.

The difference is that I am not a flying insect that flaps. I am a human being, and I would never fit in your ear, babes.