Trick or Treat or Tarantula?

My co-worker, who we will call "Clyde," had a patchy, scraggly assortment of facial hair, like someone had glued black cottonballs haphazardly across his face.  These provided him with the perfect camouflage for one of his favorite pranks.  Clyde would approach a colleague (in one case, me) with a question or some light conversation, edging closer and closer as the talk wore on.  Eventually, the person he was engaging would notice that a good-sized patch of Clyde's facial hair was moving.

There, nestled into his attempt at a beard, would be a tarantula, clinging to the side of his face.  Sometimes, he would only be a foot away before the other person would notice.

When Clyde pulled that stunt with me - who he knew had a thing about large, hairy spiders - I almost walloped him across the face with a metal feed pan.  The only thing that stopped me was fear of hitting the spider.

As zookeepers, we have access to a lot of animals that many people find scary, such as rats, snakes, spiders, and cockroaches.  When you work a lot with these animals, you can develop a fair amount of comfort with them, which can make the out-sized fear that some people have seem ridiculous to you.   You will definitely get tired of hearing people say "The only good snake is a dead snake," or point to your tarantula and scream, "Kill it with fire!" You may decide to take it upon yourself to teach them a lesson.

Don't do that.

Playing pranks with animals will in no way help convince people that snakes, spiders, etc aren't bad.  It'll just reinforce that they are scary things to be feared.  It'll leave you liable to a potential lawsuit, especially if the person ends up hurting themselves (I once innocently showed a visitor to our zoo a large Dumeril's ground boa without knowing she was terrified of snakes.  She ran away, looking over her shoulder... and ran smack into a locked door.  Thankfully, when she came to, she was understanding).

Lastly, if none of these provide sufficient motivation, you could end up with your animal being seriously hurt, possibly killed, if the person's fight-or-flight reflex veers towards "fight."  Consider the following, from Reddit:

Am I The Asshole for stomping on my lady-friend's $500 tarantula?

There is a lot of fun that you can have with Halloween at the zoo.  You can teach about scary animals.  You can have trick-or-treating (with orangutan-friendly candy) and other fall-themed events.You can have beer festivals.

But leave the animal pranks out of it.  Your snakes and spiders will thank you.

Happy Halloween!