In a desperate attempt to get a break from his nagging in-laws and regain his privacy, a Reddit user allegedly took advantage of his mother-in-law’s severe arachnophobia by getting a tarantula as a pet.

Reddit user “ProbablyAssholeGuy” isn’t really into tarantulas. He thinks they’re cool and all, but he wouldn’t have actually gotten one as a pet if weren’t for the added bonus of keeping his wife’s mother away from his house. In a post that recently went viral on the social network, the man said that his traditional Chinese in-laws had really been getting on his nerves with their unannounced visits and blatant breaches of privacy, but despite complaining to his wife about it for years, she just ignored his concerns. So when he notice his mother-in-law’s reaction to simply seeing a spider sitting in the corner of the house, he got the idea to use her arachnophobia to keep her away.

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The Tarantula Hawk is a type of wasp with an excruciatingly painful sting that lasts only three minutes, but feels like a lifetime. The pain, rated four (highest) on the Schmidt sting pain index,  is best described as “fiercely electric”. Bug experts and people who have been stung claim the pain is a lot like getting electrocuted. And the best strategy to deal with it is – get this – to lie down and start screaming!

According to a report in the Journal of the Kansas Entomology Society, “Tarantula hawks produce large quantities of venom and their stings produce immediate, intense, excruciating short term pain in envenomed humans.” The report adds that “the instantaneous pain of a tarantula hawk sting is the greatest recorded for any stinging insect,” but “the venom itself lacks meaningful vertebrate toxicity.” In other words, the wasp’s sting isn’t deadly, but it’s so painful that it’ll make you want to die.

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