Schoolboy Sean Villa always wanted to come face to face with tropical mini-beasts, but he didn't bargain on getting so close to a venomous tarantula.
Nine-year-old Sean, a pupil at Long Tower Primary School in Derry, had his close encounter with the tropical American spider during a class visit to the city's Millennium Festival of Science and Innovation. The festival is running at various locations in Derry until the end of this week. "It was scary and hairy," said Sean, who bravely volunteered to be photographed with the tarantula crawling slowly over his face. "I started to get an itchy nose and I was afraid I might sneeze because I didn't know what the spider would have done."
Mr Lee Gibbs, who travels throughout Ireland and the UK with the "Big Bug Show", which includes cockroaches, stick insects and millipedes as well as the tarantula, said: "We're up against the negative image these creatures have. In a film, if a tarantula appears, the belief is that someone is going to die. The truth is that tarantulas are not actually dangerous to humans."