I once won a goldfish at the fair that only lasted a couple of weeks before it died, so my parents and I flushed it down the toilet. After that I thought that you could flush away any pets that you didn"t want anymore. My gran used to have a little black poodle that I hated so when I was round at her house once I tried to flush it down the toilet.

Debs

When I was little, I had a fish named Jerôme and when it died, my father put it in the toilet to flush it down. Somehow, he forgot to flush and my mom ended up peeing on it. O_o I thought for a long time that she did that to punish the fish for dying...

Arisu

My co-worker's daughter had this belief.
Once, when 'Brenda' went on a trip with her dad, she informed her mother that the kitty was to remain indoors, or else, without Brenda to watch it, Kitty would get run over. Of course, while Brenda was away, the cat got out and was killed by a car. Brenda's mom told her that the kitty had seen the neighbor's dog playing in the road, and, before anyone could stop her, Kitty rushed outdoors to push the dog out of harm's way, thus dying a hero's death. Brenda was so awed she was speechless, and believed the story for years.

Elissa

The nature of bats intrigued me so much: "How could an animal that is not a bird fly?" Until the day I realized that when mice died they became bats.

Júlio De Marco

I had an ant farm when I was a child. Somehow I managed to name most of the ants, as if I could tell them apart. One of the ants got caught on the little green plastic bridge when I poured the ants into the ant farm. He stayed on the bridge all the time, never moving, so I named him Lazy. I didn't realize he was dead until the other ants dragged him off and "buried" him a week later.

Anon

At a dinner party we were talking about childhood pets, when my mother told about how her cat had become to old to live at home anymore and had gone to live in a home for retired cats, this had happened when she was quite young (about 10).

As the story was told she suddenly realised that the cat had, in reality been taken to the vet and put down.

The sudden realisation that she had never mourned her precious childhood pet dawned on her and she collapsed in tears, as the 30 years of mistake became clear!

aethel

When I was about 9 or 10 I had a goldfish that I won at the school carnival. One morning I woke up and found that the fish had jumped out of it's bowl onto the floor and died. I ran into the other room where my brother (younger) and father were seated watching cartoons and asked what happened. Upon examination my father convinced both my brother and I that the fish commited suicide after seeing my brother's face earlier that morning. We still laugh about it even today.

gullible in MN

When I was younger, I noticed how the dead animals on the highways were always at the SIDES rather thatn in the middle so I asked my mom, "How come people swerve to the side of the roads just to kill the animals???!!!"

Elizabeth

When people talked about putting cats and dogs to sleep, I thought it meant literally that-- that they'd somehow put them into a permanent state of suspended animation where they'd sleep forever. That seemed to me like a horrible thing to do. What if they had a nightmare and couldn't wake up from it? I was actually quite relieved when I finally found out it was really a euphemism for killing them.

Anthea

When I was about three-years-old, my parents had a friend named Kevin. My dad also had two pet hermit crabs. One day, I looked into the tank and they were gone, so I asked my mom what happened to them; she told me they had gone to heaven, but I misunderstood what she had said, and began telling everyone that my dad's hermit crabs went to Kevin's.

Megan