Maggie, a chimpanzee at Marine World Africa U.S.A., was helping me film a segment for an EXPLORER episode. We would explain how humans hadn’t fallen too far from the evolutionary tree, and that chimps and humans are genetically more than 98 percent alike.

As if to demonstrate one of our common bonds, Maggie was busy grooming me. Chimps spend as much time grooming as a high-priced supermodel—but with chimps it has less to do with appearance and more to do with eating: They’re looking for tasty insect snacks.

While I was talking on camera, Maggie was digging around in my hair with a piece of straw. The good news is, she didn’t find any termites there to eat. The bad news is, she did find my ear. The straw went right through my eardrum!

I tried to keep talking. But, to my punctured eardrum, my voice sounded like I’d just swallowed a helium-filled balloon. Finally, air rushing out of my ear—not to mention the pain rushing in—caused me to stop and check for blood. There was none, so somehow we pushed ahead with the filming.

Maggie hadn’t been trying to hurt me, she was just doing what chimps do—grooming. And my eardrum will heal just fine.

The incident did make me a bit apprehensive about the next few days of filming. Maggie was supposed to be the easy part. Next, I was to go walking in a field with a 450-pound (204 kilograms) Bengal tiger. I knew I’d have more to worry about than a piece of straw in my ear. But as you'll see in EXPLORER's September 22 “Big Cats show”, the tiger was a perfect gentleman, even letting me feed him his afternoon bottle of milk.

Now I’m off to California and Baja, Mexico. I’ll see you here next month, with everything intact—I hope!