34-year-old David Dowell, a father of three from Brisbane, Australia, tragically lost his life after becoming infected with salmonella, which friends claim was the result of him eating a small gecko lizard as a party dare.

Dowell, who would have turned 35 last week, was brought in to Brisbane’s Mater Hospital in “absolute agony” on December 3, 2018, three days after some friends reportedly saw him eating a gecko at a party. He never mentioned it to his partner, Allira, and to this day no one really knows for sure if he actually ate it, but a few days after that Saturday party, he was in the hospital fighting for his life. At first, doctors thought he was suffering from gastroenteritis, but in reality he had become infected with salmonella, a foodborne bacteria, that causes diarrhea, stomach cramps, fever, and, in rare cases, even death.

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25-year-old Varanya Nganthavee will likely remember her first day as a doctor at at Rajavithi Hospital in Bangkok for a very long time. After all, it’s not every day that you find a live gecko in a patient’s ear.

The young doctor recently posted her unusual experience on Facebook. She had nearly finished her first day on the job when a patient walked in complaining of an ear ache that had been pestering him for two days. Using an otoscope to inspect the ear canal, as is routine, Varanya was shocked to see something moving inside. She dripped some antibiotic drops into the man’s ear and asked him to tilt his head to ton side hoping that whatever bug had crawled inside the year would get out by itself. That didn’t happen, so a nurse had to use tweezers to yank it out. Only it wasn’t an insect, but a small gecko lizard commonly known as Jing Jok in Thailand.

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