My parents always told me that garter snakes didn't bite. They told me this so I wouldn't be afraid of them. I always picked them up and was never bitten until one day I found a very big one. I picked her up and she bit me on the arm. I was stunned, but all I did was put the snake on the ground and was fine. I didn't freak out at all. All I said to my father was, "It bit me!"

Marissa

I used to believe that when you made a bonfire, the sparks that came out turned into fireflies. Additionally, the color of said fireflies changed from orange to greenish because they cooled off after they got out of the fire.

Tom O'Connor

The Ant News....."Today in Little Hill Suburbia, 1,795 ants were crushed to their deaths by an unidentified, white object that repeatedly fell from the sky and slammed into the busy downtown area killing 1,795 ants and critically injuring hundreds more. Oh wait, this just in - it appears to be the foot of some colossal creature! Troops were sent in to gang up on it and sting it but they too were laid to waist...." When I was about 4, 5 and 6 years old I would watch nature very closely. I soon discovered that ants were an incredible component of nature because of their strength, numbers, and group effort. I hated them because to me they seemed to capitalize on tragedy, they were ruthlessly mean and incredibly self centered. I came to this conclusion after seeing a group of ants gang up on a half dead horse fly. When the fly was dead they went and told all their greedy friends who came back to the fly, crawled up under it and began carrying it off. I could just imagine the chanting song they must have been singing while carrying the fly to their ant lair - exactly like the flying monkeys in The Wizard of OZ. After that I slaughtered as many ants as I could find. I'd put off coming in for dinner for an hour in order to kill all the ants within my sight. I then imagined my gigantic image being broadcast all over the six o'clock ant news.

Phooie

I used to think butterflies would sting like bees. One of my earliest memories was getting chased around the yard by a butterfly...

Josh

When my sister was little my dad told her that the cobwebs in the basement were inhabited by "cobs" who were apparently dangerous creatures who would "get" you. She was afraid to go down to the basement until she was old enough to know that cobs didn't exist.

Spencer

I used to believe that if you killed a spider, it's spirit would haunt you forever.

Ann

when i was little, ants would always take over our kitchen.I thought it was because an ant died from over eating so that they can come out for a funeral.

ants dont eat wat they get...the quenn gets it.

When I was little, a kid at school told me that if a bug goes up your nose and gets to your brain, it'll take over your mind.

i still have my brain

The continuous buzzing noise heard outside, most often in raw nature, and sometimes in urban areas. Actually an insect, but thought to be 'the power lines.'

I realized this was infact not true last year when asking the boyfriend. "Honey... where is that sound coming from? There arent any power lines around...."

Anon

i used to balive that when you flushed a bug down the toilet it would come back up bigger and hunt you down...

Anon

My dad had an old-timer's saying, "If you wish to live and thrive, let a spider go alive." I took that to mean that if you squash a spider, you are in for a run of really bad luck!

Still wary of spiders

I once thought that snakes had legs like a centipede.

Anon

Because I used to play Pitfall as a kid, I always thought that scorpians were about as big as small dogs. It wasn't until a class trip to Mexico when I was 17 that I found out that they were not quite that large.

Keyo

My mother told me that if you pick up an ant and turn him around he will wander around lost forever. I stopped playing with ants and believed this till well inmy adult life.

Prodgirl