When I was about five years old, I finally discovered what eggs were: the things baby chickens came out of. From that point on, I was obsessed with finding a baby chicken. Every morning, I'd sneak into the kitchen and pull an egg out of the fridge. Then I'd carry it outside and throw it as hard as I could into the street, and I'd run out to see if a baby chicken was part of the wreckage. I never found one that way, so I figured I was doing something wrong. Around that time, my parents had explained to me about seeds growing into trees, so I got the brilliant idea to bury an egg and allow for the baby chicken to grow out of it like a seedling. Before I buried it in my front yard, I took off one of my socks and wrapped it around the egg, lest the chick get cold. We moved from that house about a week later, so for a few years afterward, I always wondered if the baby chicken had grown out of the ground, and if the neighbors were taking care of it for me.

Sandra Kay

I never looked too closely at birds. I used to assume that when they landed, their wings disappeared, even though they really just fold up onto the body. I assumed that they grew back when the bird took off.

anonymous

I once asked my mother how it was that chickens could continue to run around after their heads had been cut off. Instead of simply saying she didn't know, she fooled me into thinking that it was because they had brains in their toes. It wasn't until years later when I told my friends (who rolled around for ages in fits of laughter) that I realised how ridiculous this was.

Sian

I used to think that turkeys were male chickens. Don't know why, but I did.

Felicia

My family moved to England when I was five. I had previously lived in South Africa, and had never seen or heard a pigeon before. Often in the early morning I heard a distinct, repeated "coo coo" sound coming from outside my bedroom window. Overwhelmed with curiosity at the strange noise, I would race over to the window and fling the curtains open to see what it was. But all I could see was the moon in the sky (the pigeon was sitting above my window well out of my sight) Not able to see the bird, I immediately connected the moon with the noise, and for years after thought the moon made cooing noises in the morning.

Heidi

When I was 5, on of my grandmother's friends brought a bunch of crates to our house. They were filled with something in it and when I went near it, I thought I heard a chicken clucking. And until I turned 8, I thought that every big box came with a free rooster.

Bax

Whenever I asked my mom how she knew I'd done somthing bad, she would say "oh a little bird told me". I believed that and was always on my best behavior whenever a bird was around.

Nancy

A long time ago, maybe when I was five or six, I used to think the eggs we bought to eat were fertilized (meaning I thought they could hatch chickens), so I used to steal an egg or two when my mom was cooking with them and sit on them (but in a way I didn't crush them) on the couch, claiming I could hatch a chicken.

Mom told me otherwise.

skiba