animals: birds

My husband had received his first BB gun for Christmas one year and decided to go hunting. He was so thrilled to bring home a bird. When asked why he was so excited he told his parents "I did it, I shot him right in the pecker". After they finished laughing, his father explained that he shot the bird's BEAK.

Back in the day when it was safe to walk home from kindergarten by yourself, my mom had one rule: that we cross the street holding the teacher's hand.

So one day, I didn't wait for the teacher and ran across the street. When I got home, my mom asked me why I didn't cross the street with the teacher. I was perplexed as to how she knew. When I asked, she replied that a little bird told her (she used to run up an alley to the school, watch us cross the street and run home).

For the next couple of years I was convinced that my mom talked to birds. I was very careful to make sure none were around if I were breaking rules!

I believed our budge could not only speak English but also read. I would write him notes with little instructions on. When he didn't follow the instructions, I assumed he was just being bloody-minded.

You know how when you drive down the street, birds fly right in front of your windshield?
Well, when I was little I used to think the birds were all sitting in a tree, daring each other who fly closest to the cars going by without getting hit.

when I was little I was afraid of flies until mom told me they were baby birds!

When I was small I thought that birds must be made from electricity! How else could they stand on the power cables?
It took me 5 years before figure out the physics behind it!

When I was little I used to believe seagulls were called 'seagirls' and no matter how hard my mum tried to get me to say seagulls, I always replied 'Yes, SEAGIRLS! That's what I said!'.

It was only until years later when i saw it written down that I realised! D'oh!

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.

My mother told me that the first sound of a morning was the birds tweeting and farting in the trees as they woke up to start the day. I was always trying to wake up early enough to hear them as I had never heard a bird fart.

my best friend once told me that birds didnt get electrocuted when they sat on pylons because they hopped from foot to foot very quikly.

As a kid, my mom told me that chicken eggs from the supermarket wouldn't hatch because they needed to be "fertilized" -- for a shamefully long time, I thought this meant that the farmer went into the henhouse with a bucket of fertilizer (like the stuff my dad put on the lawn) and sprinkled it over the eggs.

I once saw an illustration of bird flight in a book and for a long time I thought there were separate breeds of geese called 'upstroke' and 'downstroke'.

When I was a kid I used to think that lesser spotted birds were one that were few in number. I thought if not many bird watchers saw a particular type of bird it was referred to as lesser spotted!

I used to believe that boneless chicken were really raised. I imagined that this kind couldn't fly as they do not have bones.

When I was young I thought birds were going to "bird school" when they sat in groups on the telephone lines. On Sundays, they were in "bird church." I still am reminded of that when I see them today, and I'm a senior citizen.

When I was little, the grocery store we shopped at had a large tree out in front, always covered with funny looking animals on the limbs. I don't know WHY, but for some reason, my Dad thought it was funny to tell me those were called "golly-whoppers". I believed him, until a friend of mine from grade school went with us one day to the store (MUCH LATER)...and I showed her the golly-whoppers! My Dad was in the car and had a great laugh. He had forgotten to tell me the truth...in fact, they were chickens.