scruffian

I think hippos are an interesting animal. 

 They are actually one of the most dangerous animals in the world so definitely worth knowing about.  What you have to watch out for is getting between them and water as when they are startled they run back to water and might trample you on the way.  They are quite grumpy too so if you poke them with a paddle them may chomp you.  They won’t eat you though as they are vegetarians.

They share a major weapon with lions: lions and hippos have very bad breath so if they want to stun you they breathe on you and then you are easier to defeat. 

Just a little update about some things I heard a child say today.

 “I know all the w(h)ales: the country, blue and killer”

“I did used to want to go to Antarctica but now I don’t want to because I might find I’m the wrong way up”.

An interesting thing I found out about today is scorpions. As I have mentioned before I like to know about things that are a bit frightening and I think scorpions count.

The thing I found out that I thought was most interesting is that when scorpions are angry they say “ha-tsu”. So if you hear someone say “ha-tsu” watch out as they may be a scorpion about to attack. I also did not know that there is a belief that scorpions commit suicide if surrounded by fire by stinging themselves. I don’t know if I’m relieved to discover this is not true. They can’t do that as they are not sensitive to their own venom. Which makes sense really as it would be bad to carry a substance around with you which could kill you. They have also been known to survive radiation testing. And they are occasionally born with two tails. This is a genetic abnormality.

Other animals also say strange things when they are cross. Both tigers and weasels say “fuff”.

This week there was another one of those things when someone goes into a school and shoots a load of kids.  The thing I think is strange about this is that there is then a whole series of reports about how the person had mental health problems, as though this is a big surprise.  Surely going into a school and shooting children is a pretty clear indicator of mental illness.

The slant never seems to be: how come this person didn’t get more help?  Why isn’t there much support for people with those types of problems?  This is particularly ridiculous when you consider that about 1 in 4 people suffer a period of depression in their lives.  Obviously only a fraction of people with mental illness will go into a school and do some shooting, but I think this all points to the fact that there’s not enough focus on helping people be well mentally.  I think this probably starts with parenting and education.  After all, there is so much emphasis on academic achievement that actually being ok is forgotten.  It also doesn’t help that any other label will do, just not mental health problems.  I’m very often involved in the process of diagnosing autism and it seems to me that some kids get that diagnosis instead of a diagnosis of mental health problems, or they may have both difficulties but just get one label – autism. 

One real problem with this is that it means that people don’t realise that more people need to be paid to work in mental health for adults and for children so no-one does anything about it, and that it should be a part of home and school life too.  Also, people think they’ve got the answer and everything is down to autism, when maybe we’re missing something…

It’s the same with the original “I don’t like mondays” case.  Turns out Brenda Ann Spencer used the gun her father gave her when she was less than 17 in the shootings and never had any coherent reason for what she did.  Didn’t anyone wonder why her father had bought her a gun in the first place?  And isn’t there something wrong when a person doesn’t seem to understand why it matters that she killed some people?

I think this will probably keep happening as long as society doesn’t try to care for children’s needs rather than just their education.  And whilst anything is blamed instead of realising that one way or another those people just weren’t looked after well enough.

I am very glad of all the messages that have been put up so far – thanks.  I did not think anyone would look so it’s really good when people do.

I am about to go to bed (feeling sleepy, as Liam advised) but a quick addition to my comments on spiders:

I found out today that tarantulas can die by falling down stairs.  This is because they have an exoskeleton rather than an endoskeleton so they can be “broken”.  This makes them, in this respect, a little more like a crab than a spider.  Last night my sleep problem involved waking up in the middle of the night thinking there was a spider on me.  I had to put the light on and check all around.  Sorry Ben.  Now I know that if I think there is a spider on me, I just have to thrown it very hard against a wall and that will break it. 

Sweet dreams.