Snake! · Tuesday May 1, 2007 by Abbie
Today we went to the disabled swimming session again. We were the first ones into the pool but even so, for some reason Ram didn’t seem to want to go. We always have to walk down to the deep end and get in to he water there, and all the way down he was singing to the tune of ‘Ode to Joy’ that he didn’t want to go swimming but knew if we went back home he would regret it!
I have no idea of why he was so anxious. We did stay, and he did enjoy it, but he was anxious. When a lovely young man with a wonderful smile came up to us with his carer, I said hello, and Ram became distressed straight away and tried to move me away from them. I don’t want to blank out the other disabled people, as they have just as much right to be friendly and talk to us, but Ram just can’t cope with me talking to someone else.
After swimming we went into the little shopping area, and happened to run into another home ed family. They hadn’t seen Ram out and about in his buggy yet, and the boys were asking why he is in it. Interestingly, they noticed that because he was in his buggy we actually got to stop and talk for a few minutes!
It seems the buggy fulfils two functions; it allows Ram mobility without pain from walking, and also gives him a buffer between himself and other people, like his own little cocoon. Of course, it may just have been the pain before that stopped us from chatting to people we met. It could have been that because he was in pain he just saw people as a delay in getting the shopping done and getting back into the car so as to relieve the pain in his feet. I guess we will never know as Ram just doesn’t seem to be able to tell us these things.
When we got home Ram went round to the back garden while I unloaded the car. He suddenly came running back and told me to drop everything as there was a snake in the pond!
I rushed round and sure enough there was a small snake in the corner of the first step down into the pond. I got it out with our pond net so that we could see what it was. We didn’t have long to look at it because it slid under the rocks at the end of the pond. But we were able to identify it as a grass snake. We got the book out again and looked it up and amazingly, found out that they are very good swimmers and like to eat frogs, fish, and tadpoles!
As it was a baby one (the last one we saw in the garden was over metre long but this one was only about a foot) we figured it was going for taddies. We were a bit worried that it might not be able to get out again, so we rebuilt the ramps of rocks that we have on each step of the pond, to make sure that they can get in and out.
In the afternoon Ram spend the time flitting between watching some science programmes on TV, and playing on the computer. He kept saying he was board, but I decided that sometimes they just need to find their own things to do. Eventually he settled down and was happy, even though the was still flitting from one to the other!
