animals

I used to believe, after being told by a friend my age, that if you buried an ant with a chip of glass, that it would turn into a termite. We'd bury our ants one day, and come back and look for them a day later, and every time the ant and piece of glass were gone (or we couldn't remember where we'd buried them, more likely). One time we found a termite where we thought we'd buried the ant, so that of course proved it was true!

When I was younger I used to belive that bats were imaginary.

This was because the only place I had ever seen them was in Scooby Doo cartoons!

I was actually mid-teens before I realised that they were real.
The only way I found out was by watching a wildlife documentry on TV, I was very disappointed when I saw them because I had always imagined them to be the size of a seagull!!

Always thought until I was 6 that you milked a cow by pumping it's tail up and down. Saw a toy one and that's how it worked.Still remember how hurt I felt by laughter when I mentioned this first time I saw a cow being milked. That was 48 years ago

I can't begin to tell you how relieved I was to find that I was not the only child that thought that dogs were male and cats were female. My mom has been teasing me about that for years. My husband believed that Tigers were girls and Lions were boys. Sounds logical to me.

I was told by an elderly relative that Earwigs would crawl inside your ear when you were asleep and eat its way into your brain. Living on a farm where there are heaps of these horrible things, I was terrified if I saw one. Even now at 67 I cannot stand them.

When I was a kid, we'd sometimes drive through the countryside and see large round bales of hay. My parents told us they were turds left by giant rabbits, and of course all three of us believed that. I had my kids believing it for a while, too.

I believed that when a cat ate a mouse, the mouse went to live in the cats tail. How else did the the tip of the cats tail move so seemingly independent from the rest of the cat? And that would explain why the cats liked to chase their tale!

My Nana once caught my cousin (who was about 3-4 years old at the time), planting feathers in a row in the garden. When she asked Jason what he was doing he replied, "planting feathers so birds will grow Nana!"

One night when I was really young we were driving home
from my grandmothers when I notices the blinking red lights
on the radio towers along the highway. Confused about how there
were so many red lights up there and there were no buildings my
mother *probably to shut me up* told me they were sleeping birds.
I then went through a number of years where I thought that birds
would glow red when they slept. I thought the blinking was rythmic
with their breathing.

When i was little, i used to think that the electicity sub-stations had lions in them, and that was why they were dangerous. i thought that it just said "DANGER - ELECTRICITY!" so that little kids didn't get frightened! Dumb i know but hey, give me a break i was 6!

I knew the phrase about "room to swing a cat" was just a saying about enough space...but we immigrated to NZ from San Francisco when I was in my 30's and went farming. Imagine my surprise when the vet told me the best way to make a newborn lamb breathe after a difficult assisted birth, was to pick it up by the hind legs and swing it up and over in a circle. Imagine how I felt when it worked! I was a ballet dancer...transplanted to being an ovine midwife and had a steep learning curve.
BUT we knew a Kiwi butcher who really thought ewes had one more rib than wethers....great powers of observation...the amazing thing was he wasn't just trying to kid the Yanks.

I believed that cats only lived for a very short time, usually no more then 6 months. I was astounded to find out much later in life that my friend had 2 cats & one was 10 years old and the other nearly 14! My sister and I were always bringing home stray cats & pleading with our parents to keep them. Guess our parents thought it was easier to go along with us at first & then when our initial excitement waned, dad somehow found a new home for them. I think that I believed they ran away to die.

My uncle Bruce always told me that Welsh sheep can stand straight on steep hills because they have two legs shorter than the others.
I'm sure it must have been high school biology lessons when the truth hit me...!!!

I believed that cows always laid down when it was going to rain, thereby reserving a nice dry spot to lie on. I therefore thought I could predict rain before anyone else.

When I was very young, Smoothie, our English Bulldog, was very ill with cancer. On one of many visits to the 'doggie doctor' I was left alone with my imagination in the waiting room. Since I had never met the 'doggie doctor', I sat trying to visualize him. That is when I decided if the doctors were dogs, then the cats must be nurses.

When I was about 7 or8 years old I always wondered why do the chicks crowd undertheir mother-hens feathers and wings. I figured out that ifcalfs suckle theirs mothers, lambs suckle their mothers so must the chicks do under thewings. When I went to school, and was about 10 the teacher was asking: do calves sucklet heir mothers? Yees! Do piglets suckle their mother? Yees! Do chickls suckle their mother? Nooo! only I said loudly Yees! The whole class and the teacher had a good laugh and I was explained that the chickcs are kept warm by their hen mother under her wings and inher feather! I remembered that forever!!!