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With a baby kangaroo, an owl and a tarantula on hand for a dozen kids to pet and play with, it should have been the best birthday party ever for the Litzingers’ three-year old son.

But just seconds after their toddler held the furry arachnid, he began to blink, rub his eye, then cry, for hours, and in the days after.

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Allison Litzinger and her husband, Matt, later learned the Rose Hair tarantula, brought by the exotic animal handler they hired, shot tiny barbed hairs into their son’s eye — a little-known defence mechanism other than the poisonous bite most people fear.

“It was pretty traumatic for our son,” said Mrs. Litzinger. “We tried to wash his eyes out, and he just started screaming at the top of his lungs.”

These microscopic fibres, called urticating hairs, cause stinging and itching when in contact with the skin. When in a person’s eye, however, the tiny barbs of the hair hook in, slowly sinking deeper into the eyeball and potentially causing damage to vision, making it very difficult, if not impossible, to remove, said Dr. Kamiar Mireskandari, an ophthalmologist at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.