Working in a hospital I know that people, especially kids but not exclusively kids, put things in strange places. The nose and ear are the areas where foreign objects are most often placed by children.
Strange things get in our ears and noses by no fault of our own as well. Medical literature is full of reports of insects crawling into or nesting in peoples ears. One recent case was newsworthy – In May an Albany Ore child had a spider the size of a pencil eraser in her ear. She had to go to the doctors office to have it removed.
The child, Jesse Courtney, was no worse for wear and thought the whole experience was kind of cool even bringing the then dead spider to school to show it off.
Apparently in 1993 there was a British machinist who had bad earaches. It was found that he had a pregnant spider living in his ear. He ended up keeping the spider as a pet once it was extricated from his ear.
