animals

I believed when my granmother said during a big storm that if I slept with my pet dog or cat, the thunder could shoot me in my bed.
Because the animal fur attracted the electricity.

We used to believe that if you saw an ambulance it was terrible bad luck and the only way to neutralise it was to hold your collar until you saw a four legged animal. Several times this made me late for school.

When I was little, I believed that hamburger and steaks and pretty much all meat in general came from a cow. Only, I believed that somehow the cow chose to give it away, kind of like milking a cow, only a lot more friendly and fairytale like. I think that I even had an image in my head of a cow talking to a farmer, saying "Ok, you can take a little off my belly for hamburgers today". I thought cows were so thoughtfull; and I cried when I found out that that's not how it works. Strangely enough, I'm a vegetarian now...

When I was little, I watched lots of cartoons (and still do). A common joke was to show a school of fish actually in school! I didn't realize it was a joke until I was older!

I used to want to be a cat when I was younger, like not just a bit, but REALLY want to. To the degree that I had my little friends believing that I, like a werewolf, turned into a cat when I got pissed off. That's not the funny thing though - slightly strange, maybe, but not the point. Even though I tried to convince myself that this was true, I knew in my hart of hearts that it was all a big lie. However, one day my Mum provided the solution. She was feeding the cat, and I asked what cat food tasted like. In a slightly convoluted version of the old 'don't eat too much of that, you'll turn into it' myth she said never to try it, or I'd turn into a cat. Silly woman - from my fixation with all things cat, she should of guessed that that was my ultimate aim in life. So from that day on I took to sneaking cat biscuits, and eating them on the sly. I never actually had the guts to try the canned stuff. Just as well I didn't ever turn into a cat, as I'd have had to eat it every day!

When we were young, my father didn't allow us to have animals since we travelled a lot. Well the first time we were able to get a cat, my little brother was sitting on my mom's lap, holding that little kitten. He sat there and rubbed its fur for a few minutes. Then all of a sudden he jumped, picked up the kitten, and held it to his ear and exclaimed, "Mom! This cat has a motor inside!" He believed that for a very long time!

When we were kids, my grandmother told us that dogs attracted lightning, so she wouldn't let us bring the dog in when it stormed. We were terrified our dog would be hit by a lightning bolt, so we would stage a commando mission where some of us distracted Nanny while the others smuggled our 80lb Irish Setter into the bedroom closet. Good thing there were 5 kids in the family or our dog might have been toast!

Until I was 8 or 9 I thought you could tell venomous and non-venomous snakes apart based on the simple fact that poisonous snakes can talk.

I guess they never should have let me watch "Jungle Book".

I had a picture book about squirrels. One picture showed a squirrel facing the reader, with its tail held up behind. From that picture, I believed that there was a kind of squirrel whose tail grew out of the back of its head.

I used to think that cats were girl animals and dogs were boy animals.

when i waz a kid and on holiday at our caravan my ma. had a delph chicken which you could lift the top off and she kept eggs in .every morning i got up for breakfast she told me the chicken laid the eggs i waz eating and i well believed her

My mother, being from the old school, once told my siblings and I that there were "trick dogs," in an attempt to explain what the neighbor dogs were "doing" one day. They were, of course, doing IT. We were all on the bus one day and pulled up at a stop light. My brother and I spotted two dogs going at it, and very enthusiastically said, "look mom! Trick dogs!." She told me several years later that everyone on the bus had to take a look for themselves, and that she felt like crawling under the seat.

Not quite a childhood belief, as this comes from my father who is in his 50s.... nonetheless, until about a year ago, he believed Tigers are green.

It came up in conversation about a year ago and we (the whole family) actually had to find a picture of one before he would believe all of us that they are actually orange....

Miller moth's would swarm around our porchlight on summer evenings. During the day they disappeared and I naturally assumed that they were all flying towards the sun, returning when the sun set and they flew back to the lights on the ground.

Mu friends and I used to believe that if an ant crawled in your ear it would get under your skin and travel around your body and drive you crazy. We were absolutely sure this was true and tried to protect our ears if we slept outside during the summer.

When my daughter was little, she was terrified of giraffes and we didn't know why. We finally figured out that every time, she heard someone say to shut a window because a draft was coming in, she thought a giraffe was trying to get into the car or house!