My son became so attached to his cherished ‘pet’

My son had a meltdown in the school playground this week about his pet tarantula. Allow me to explain. All week, my five-year-old Wilf, who has so many mood swings I’m genuinely concerned he may be going through the menopause, has been telling us his primary school teacher says he can bring his tarantula in.

Wilf, you see, has a pet tarantula. Called Poison.

Now let me clarify here. It isn’t a real tarantula.

Each to their own and all that, but I’ve always had a firmly-held belief that people who keep spiders and snakes and any other kind of slightly off-kilter animals as pets are, well, weird.

I don’t mean that in an insulting way. I just think it’s strange.

Anyway, getting back to the tarantula which my son claims to have as a pet, it is actually a toy mechanical tarantula my sister bought for his birthday.

She purchased it as a laugh because she knows I detest spiders but Wilf loves it and has developed a strange and slightly worrying fascination with these creatures.

Each morning he runs into my bedroom and asks if we can watch a video of a tarantula on my phone. “Can you search ‘tarantula bites a man’ daddy?” he asks, as I wonder whether he’s got some sort of mental health issue.

He mentioned his tarantula to his teacher, who told him – so Wilf assured us –he could bring it in.

I thought this odd. I mean why would any primary school teacher encourage a pupil to bring in a large toy spider which glows red and runs around and would generally cause utter chaos?

But Wilf has gone on and on about it, so last Friday, worn down by incessant nagging, I put the tarantula in a plastic bag and took it in.

I tentatively approached his teacher and said “excuse me Mrs Kirkman, Wilf says you’ve told him he can bring his pet tarantula in”.

At this point Mrs Kirkman took a slight step backwards and, looking worried, replied, “oh, he’s really got one then?”

“Yes,” I replied, “it’s in the bag”.

“You keep it in a plastic Tesco Express bag?” she said.

It was at this point, I realised there had been a slight error in communication and explained the tarantula was a toy.

“Oh, it’s not real,” she said, colour returning to her cheeks. “It’s just a toy not a pet.”

At which point Wilf dissolved into a flood of tears, began screaming “he is real, he’s my pet”, and collapsed to the floor sobbing so hard it almost brought on an asthma attack.

It was a stressful school drop-off. However, if it cures him of his tarantula obsession then maybe not a wasted one.