Recently, I was asked to stock and sell tarantulas. In my mind, this translated to "pay money for spiders." Big, hairy spiders. Things that get my wife jumping on furniture to get away from them while screaming for me to kill them. I didn't take the request all that seriously and ignored it.

But the requests kept coming in — rose hair tarantulas and pinktoe tarantulas. Every other store wanted them. My customers asked…and I needed to figure it out.

Shortly after the first spider order arrived, while my employee was packing one for an order, a small pinktoe tarantula ran quickly up her arm, down her back and on to the pack station. I swear I will forever have nightmares about the speed with which that whole event happened.

And then she turns to me, right after watching this horror and she says, "We really should carry more tarantula species."

A little back story here…all the major care of the reptiles, amphibians and nonfish species is done by one person. That person has severe arachnophobia — an actual, professionally diagnosed phobia of spiders. As phobias go, I think that one is pretty well-reasoned. So, I would carry an animal that could not be cared for by "crew" that does that sort of thing. Oh, this plan is genius!

I’m pretty sure it was Helen Keller who said "Life is a daring adventure or it is nothing." With the bold spirit of a woman who has never seen a 10-inch furry spider, I decided to roll up my sleeves, do some homework and see if there is something worth selling. The conclusion I came to surprised me — they are beautiful creatures.

They come in bright orange, purple or metallic blue and many of the species are actually very calm. "Skittish" is a descriptor to avoid as it means they are likely to freak out and bite you. Some have stripes or bands or tiger patterns on their rump. One or two crickets feeds them for a week. Your tarantula customers will be back often!

The real gold mine I found was figuring out which ones are good pets and which ones are mean, bitey, nightmarish things. When you search for them by their Latin name on the Web, you can look through images.

The spiders that have a lot of photos with them standing on a hand or arm is an indication that they are easy to handle. If you can’t find many photos of them walking on a human, they may be "skittish."

When you sell a tarantula, you will need to sell an appropriate cage, some décor and something to keep the cage around 80 F in most cases. Some like to burrow, while some live in trees — the cage should match the spider’s needs.

My cost after purchasing them is about 5 cents a week. They don’t die and create no smell. They beg for food. They are a dream from a "livestock" standpoint.

After a number of months of keeping spiders, even our resident arachnophobe actually said, "That one is kinda cute." In a world where zombies and vampires are all the rage — tarantulas are hip and much easier than a hamster.