Tarantula Owner Sues Store Over Pet’s Actions

When Sharon Miller brought home a pet tarantula her daughter wanted, she knew they could bite.

But she says she didn’t know they could potentially blind: The spiders’ chief defensive maneuver is to flick microscopic hairs off their bodies at their attacker’s eyes.

Miller has sued the Lake Forest pet store that sold her the spider, contending she was left with blurred vision after several hairs from her daughter’s pet lodged in her right eye.

“These little hairs are not soft but actually are like little barbs,” said Miller’s attorney, Thomas Hyatt. “She got several of these in her right eye as she reached into the tarantula’s cage when she was cleaning it.”

After Miller rubbed her eyes, they became red and extremely painful, Hyatt said. She told Hyatt that it was like having burning grains of sand in her eye. Her vision was reduced in the right eye and she remains under the care of a physician, he said.

Miller filed a lawsuit Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court against Petown, the store that sold her the tarantula March 28. She is alleging that although the store told her the pet was not poisonous and instructed her on its feeding, it failed to warn her about the dangers of the animal’s body hairs.

The lawsuit contends the store was negligent and seeks medical expenses and compensation for emotional distress.

“It’s incumbent upon [salespeople] who distribute and sell tarantulas to warn customers about this,” Hyatt said. “If you go out and buy a gun, you know the gun can kill you. But if you buy a tarantula, if it’s not poisonous, you don’t think of anything else. Obviously, I would rely on a retailer to warn you, and this just wasn’t done.”

Petown’s manager said she had not heard about the lawsuit and declined to comment. The store’s owner did not return phone calls.

Despite the injury, Miller kept the tarantula, a pet for her 8-year-old daughter, Gabriella, Hyatt said. Miller could not be reached for comment.

Experts said it’s common for tarantulas to flick their hairs.

“Their hairs have little protein irritants that can and do cause severe inflammation to the eyes of dogs and cats and can cause potential blindness,” said Douglas Mader, a Long Beach veterinarian who is prominent in the field of exotic pets.

Just as some people are more sensitive to animal and insect stings, reactions to the hairs vary, Mader said. He recommended that people rinse their eyes with water, and go to their physician if the pain continues.

Some tarantulas bite and inflict a wound with a poisonous or irritating toxin. But their chief defensive mechanism is to flick their hind legs forward, scraping the abdomen and flinging its body hair into the air.

“The idea is that the tarantula is trying to get it in their attackers’ eyes, such as dogs, and they often do,” Mader said. “Their aim is surprisingly good.”

Greg Hickman, co-owner of All Creatures Care Cottage in Costa Mesa, said he can recall a similar reaction to tarantula hairs after opening a crate that had arrived from South America.

“It was filled with 40 to 50 tarantulas,” Hickman said, “and the air conditioning fan had hit them just right and their hairs wafted through the air. My hands started to itch, then my arms started to itch and it was pretty irritating.”

Tarantulas are found in warm climates such as the southern and western United States and in the tropics. They make popular pets because they are fascinating and unique creatures, pet store owners said. Typically, common variety tarantulas sell for about $15 in pet stores, but rarer South American varieties can fetch $700 and more.

“Most are fairly safe to handle,” Hickman said, “but some people are hypersensitive to these hairs.”