The singer Katie Melua has had a spider extracted from her ear after it took up residence for a whole week. Melua revealed her close encounter with the arachnid on her Instagram account, complete with pictures.

The singer said she had been bothered by a rustling sound in her ear and went to the doctor, who used a micro-vacuum cleaner to remove the creature. The 30-year-old Georgian-British singer believes the spider - identified as a member of the salticidae or jumping spider family - had found its way into a pair of earbud headphones. 

"'Basically I used these old in-ear monitors to block out sound on a flight. A little spider must have been in them and crawled inside my ear and stayed there for the week," she wrote.

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