If you’re a tarantula owner, you know there are several things people say to tarantula owners that a dog or cat owner would never have to deal with.

If you have ever owned a spider, or even another non-traditional pet, you know exactly what it’s like to love your pet and think it’s the most precious thing on earth, while others recoil, insult and even threaten to do horrible, violent things to your little sweetheart.

I noticed this right away when I got my chilean rose hair, Spidey.

I was so ecstatic to share this beautiful creature with the world. I thought my enthusiasm would be welcomed, but I was wrong in many cases. Every tarantula-lover, owner or not, will experience this isolation and ridicule at one point in their lives.

People just don’t get it. You wouldn’t even think to yell “KILL IT WITH FIRE” about a puppy, would you? So why is it okay to respond like that to someone’s beloved, eight-legged pet (face it – they are pretty much like little puppies and kitties anyway, once you get to know them)?

This injustice makes me so mad that it even inspired me to take a t-shirt about it to raise awareness. I think it really drives the point home and makes people think before they say something:

Over the past few months, I’ve collected the responses of tarantula owners who have had to experience this behavior in order to love their pets publicly. This was one that I found so heartbreaking, it’ll forever be imprinted in my mind. It came from silverspider448 on Tumblr, and once you read it you’ll be just as shocked at the cruelty of some people.

“When I was 9 years old… I had a rose hair tarantula. One night my family and I came home to find that our appointment had been broken into.. they stole several things, but the most horrifying thing to me was the discovery that the monster that had broken into our appointment had gone out of their way just to torture my precious pet, flip him on his back and stabbed him with a fork… I cried for days over that… and even though I love tarantulas and spiders, I have not been able to bring myself to get a other one… it was just so heartbreaking for me… but no one understood that…. if it had been someone’s dog it would have been all over the news… because he was a tarantula no one cared. :-(“

What happened to this tarantula is heartbreaking, but the fact that this person was not allowed to be comforted or grieve their pet is just as awful. I cannot even imagine what it would be like to go through this.

While many of us will fortunately never have to experience that level of cruelty, tarantula owners still get some of the worst comments from people. I myself have been picking up food for Spidey and have people judge me for it. One older man, upon learning the crickets were for my tarantula, said this:

“I bet that keeps the boys away.”

How inappropriate! And there’s way more where that came from. Below is just a SMALL sample of things tarantula owners have shared from their own experiences, and hopefully it will really make people think twice about it.

This is what we all go through, and this is exactly why it needs to change:

“Like one isn’t enough.” – Voidpuzzle

Credit: AwesomeArachnids

“My ex threatened to send her dad over with a big boot to kill Lilith should she ever escape.” – Sociopathindisguise

“-[inarticulate screaming] -“keep it away from me!!!”
-“you know it’s gonna kill you”
-“a tarantula? really?” (repeat for like two minutes)
-“dear god why”
-“does it bite?”/“has it bitten you?”
-“it’s just a spider, it can’t love you” (probably true, but don’t spoil my fun)”

– Mister-boss

Credit: Brachypelmasmithi

““Kill it!” is the most common…but then I just ask people how they’d feel if I said that about their dog or cat and they (mostly) get it.” – No1really

“I’ve never owned tarantulas, but I’ve been keeping other arachnids and insects since I was a little girl. I get a lot of flack for my pet roaches, especially “if I see one of them I’ll kill it!” I also get  (when referring to my South African flat rock, Venus) “Why would you keep a scorpion in your house? Won’t it kill you?” a lot more often than I’d like. By far the worst thing that happened was when I was about 11 or 12. There was a big, beautiful Argiope aurantia on my back porch that I had named Banana. I would throw grasshoppers in her web to catch and she had kind of become like a family pet. One day she made an egg sac, then one afternoon I go outside to find Banana had been knocked down and stabbed with a stick, and the neighbor kids (my “friends” at the time) were using that same stick to jab at the egg sac. I cried. I honestly cried.” – Smackysmackins

Credit: Morbidmusings

“My mom told me I have to get rid of it. And, if it escapes, she is calling Orkin to kill it.” – Madamfluffykins

“I once had a friend over who told me, ‘if they get out I’m killing them’” – Nuclear-warrior

Credit: Talesfromthewater

“Most of people don’t react besides not understanding why I have them at all. Many say eww.” – Camelrat

“Oh I’ve had people threaten to squish them. To my face. When said spider(s) are safely enclosed in their tanks doing nothing. That’s the most annoying. It usually ends in verbal altercations.” – Behelitohs

“That they will squish my baby.To that I say you are no longer welcome in my house.” – They-call-it-madness

“Gross, if I saw that tarantula I’d kill it!” – Krimsteinbelt 

“I don’t currently own one, but I used to. Whenever I tell people about it, people tend to react poorly. One girl told me that if I still had it, she would go to my house and kill it. We weren’t friends for a long time.” – Reptiphile

As you can see, it’s absolutely heartbreaking to have a pet that a lot of people feel free to disrespect and threaten their safety. Please share this post so that we can spread awareness for non-traditional pets’ value.

Do you have something you’d like to add? Please leave a comment, or if you’d like to raise awareness out in public, feel free to grab my tarantula activism t-shirt!

If you’d like to learn more about tarantulas and how to care about them, be sure to purchase my full tarantula guide! And if you’d like more free spider tips, sign up for my weekly tarantula newsletter, join my Tarantula Heaven group on Facebook or subscribe to my tarantula YouTube channel!