animals

I used to believe that if you killed an ant or two that were traveling in their line formation, that at night the rest would come in your house and try and kill you for revenge.

When I was about 5, I recall being scared by one of those huge wolf spiders luking in the bathtub when I went to go do 'the deed'. I screamed and my grandmother came in asking me what was wrong..I told her my fear and she looks at me with the most serious face and puts a finger up to her lips..and goes shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh your scare my pet herman..hes very sensitive..Damnded if I didnt believe that and have never feared them since. Of course herman wasnt her pet, but my grandmother sure handled my phobia with unique aplomb. :)

When we were young, my girlfriend Bonnie's father told us that if we held a hamster by the tail,
his eyes would fall out. We were appalled!!! It was years until we realized that hamsters have no
tails.

When I was younger I used to believe in an animal called "dahu": this animal was supposed to live on the side of mountains, according to my relatives... I've been looking for it and even hunting it for ... a long time! It had two legs shorter than the two others, so that you just had to shout to make it turn back and fall! Then you could catch it!

When I was walking along the neighborhood one day I came across a cat who meowed very loudly and consistently and kept rolling around on the grass. Since it was a female cat (I checked), I jumped to the conclusion of "poor cat, she's in pain because she needs to mate with a boy cat!" I actually carried her around for the rest of the day looking for a boy cat for her to mate with so she wouldn't be in not-mating-pain. But it was probably just one of those loud cats. Anyway, I felt sorry for her because she wouldn't be mating with anyone that day.

When my sister and I were about 6/7, we were playing a game with my older sis, naming animals throught the alphabet. When we got to "L" my older sis said "locust". We asked what that was, and she said locusts are big grasshoppers that come on their thousands and eat everything. Well she was telling the truth, but us being kids we imagined these huge 'monsters' towering over houses and reaching in through the windows for human snacks... I had recurring nightmares after that!!

When I was little (before starting kindergarten) my entire family convinced me that masquitoes wore sox. My mother said that the mother would knit the socks with its needle nose and even killed a masquitoe to show me its striped "sox" (which she said came from my godmothers striped sweater. I found out that this was all a lie right before entring school because my mother didn't want me convincing other children that this was true. To this day my family picks on me for believing them, and I'm married and have a child of my own!!

when I was very young I used to believe that bats were huge big birds that were bigger than planes that would come in the night and whisk you up in their huge claws and take you away. I was terrified of being alone and would never ever leave my window open at night.

WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I BELIEVED THAT A MOUSE GIVE ME MONEY WHEN I LOST MY TOOTH. I USED TO PUT MY TOOTH UNDER MY PILLOW AND I BELIEVED THAT THE MOUSE COMING WHEN I WAS SLEEPING.

When I was 8 year old, I believed that when cats are very old they would transform themselves in to bats and after that they come back to bite me in my neck.

My brother and I love to suck my mother in, because its so reliably easy. Even my sister would get her, like when she got her to believe that laboratory monkeys were being released to good homes as the experiments were finished ---these monkeys were of course fully trained and could dress themselves and sit at the table for meals, some could even talk. (Dog part coming up.)Finding it hard to give this up, I fell into tricking my future wife too (I'm getting therapy). For example we lived in England for a bit, and they had signs around saying "KEEP DOG ON LEAD". She asked what that meant (they use the word 'leash' in her country). I carefully explained how lead was used as a nutritional supplement to keep dogs calm in England, much safer in parks, don't you know. This worked quite well for some months until she twigged. That was 19 years ago, yet she still has this indignation about it.

My sister told me many times that dogs are a shark's favourite food. I got to thinking after a while that it would be quite difficult for a shark to acquire a taste for dog, seeing as how dogs live on land and all. It kind of got a grip on me though because we had a lot of shark attacks in the ocean where we lived in the 60s. We would swim a lot through the long hot summers, and I always felt concern if a dog went in the water, and reassured myself that if a shark came then as long as I kept my eye on the dog I would have some warning to get out of the water. Not really a relaxing swim though.

When my sister and I were both younger, I used to scare the crap out of her whenever there was a bug nearby because I'd tell her that they'd all get on her skin and bite her and that they'd...SUCK YOUR BLOOD!

One time in Science class, biology, we had to disect squid, which have tenticles, which we were allowed to cook and eat after the class. I proudly announced on arrival at home to my parents about me disecting squids and then about how we all ate their testicles!! I didn't understand why they laughed at me!!

I used to think elephants had six legs. I think this is because I saw a picture of a group of (cartoon) elephants who were standing close to each other and this gave the impression that one or more of them had six legs!(??!!)

I used to be scared of pigeons because they were always in the playground. I was afraid that they would peck the backs of my bare calves and the blood would gush out - as though my calves were just thin bags of blood that could be popped!

I used to wonder if puddles were really just oceans for ants.. and wondered if they ever wondered what it would be like to sail over the ocean.

Leafs made nice rafts, so on went the ants floating off on their leaf-boats..