Something for the arachnaphobes to play with... Hee Hee!!!!....

Saw this on the news the other day... YIKES!

Blast of tarantula hair injures owner's eye

The Canadian Press
Date: Saturday Jan. 2, 2010 11:25 AM ET

When it comes to weird medical injuries, this is really one for the books.

A 29-year-old British man was referred to an ophthalmologist after suffering for weeks with a red, watery eye that wouldn't respond to treatment with antibiotics.

A close examination of the eye revealed a number of minuscule hairs embedded in his cornea, much to the surprise of both patient and doctor.

After a little probing of his memory, the man recalled he had been cleaning the glass tank that houses his pet tarantula, when the burly arachnid blasted him in the face with a "mist of hairs."

"Before that, he'd been aware that his spider was a little bit agitated," said eye specialist Dr. Zia Carrim of St. James's University Hospital in Leeds, England. "But when he sensed movement and turned around, he saw this mist and it was right into his face. So he was literally centimetres away."

Carrim, reporting with colleagues on the case in this week's issue of The Lancet, said the man had about a dozen hairs released by his Chilean Rose tarantula stuck in his right eyeball, and they were far too tiny to remove with even the most delicate of micro-forceps.

"The hair was so fine that we couldn't grasp it to pull it out," he said, describing its measurements as about one-fiftieth of an eyelash in diameter and a fraction of a millimetre long.

"What happens is they're barbed and have these sort of prickly edges. And once they find their way into the cornea, for some weird reason which we still don't know, they seem to travel through the cornea gradually. And as they do that, they incite an inflammatory response, as well."

Carrim said the inflammation not only reddened the patient's eye, but also caused pain and reduced his vision.

Since first seeing him in February, the man's eye has been treated with steroid drops and his condition has vastly improved, he said, adding that although the spider hairs are still lodged in his eye, it's hoped they will eventually break down and disappear.

Arachnologist Jonathan Coddington, associate director of research and collections at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, said most of the New World tarantula species (in Central and South America) are equipped with the hair-raising defence mechanism.

"They have a specialized patch of what are called urticating -- itchy, in other words -- hairs on the back end of their abdomens, and they flick those hairs off" with one of the back legs, he explained.

"You can get them in your eye, you can get them up your nose, you can get them stuck in your fingers ... they're covered with some sort of noxious chemical that inflames the itch."

While tarantulas can sink their more-than-centimetre-long fangs into an unwary hand, leaving two deep punctures that could become infected, Coddington said the bites aren't poisonous to humans.

What owners of pet tarantulas should be wary of is their spider suddenly lifting up one leg while balancing on the other seven. That's the signal that the beastie is about to let fly.

"And it's really fast, it's like a blur of motion," he said. "That would be a bad moment to stick your head in a terrarium and sniff."

Carrim said his patient's case is a cautionary tale for fanciers of the big, furry spiders, which are becoming increasingly popular as household pets.

"And I think people who own tarantulas often don't know about this defence mechanism that their pets have," he said. "And if you think that you might be vulnerable to your spider, to your tarantula attacking your eyes with these hairs, then wear goggles."

"I think the main message is if you own a tarantula, be careful."