creepy crawlies

My brother and I would catch fireflies in old peanut butter jars, punch holes in the lids, and save them for the next day. When we got up the next morning, invariably the bugs would have "escaped", or so my mother told us. It wasn't until recently that my mother admitted letting them go after we went to bed. She has a heart of gold.

layla

I used to think that if I killed an insect, armies of its angry mourning friends would come to take their revenge on me.

I'm still kind of nice to spiders and ants... You never know...

Sophie

when i was really small, we lived in a place where the mosquitoes were HUGE. there was a dead one trapped between my window and the window sill...always in the same spot (but at this time i suppose it hadnt occurred to me that life ends) anyways, my parents used that mosquito to put fear into my sister and i. it became the "eezil floss" and if we were bad girls, it would come into our beds at night and grow to humongous proportions and swallow us whole. ha ha.

christina

I used to believe that moths were sent by the devil to steal your innermost thoughts. Whilst you were asleep they'd fly into your ear and through to your brain. I still cannot go to sleep if there's a single moth in the house, and always pull the duvet up so that it covers my ears, just in case.

Petra-Marie

my family used to ask "what makes a spiderweb?" "a spider", I'd reply. "and what makes a cobweb?" "a cob". I never understood why this was so funny, and it hurt my feelings

rina

One night i was staying at a friends place. her little sister was going to bed so i said to her "don't let the bed bugs bite". I found out in the morning her mother couldn't get her to sleep because she had woken up and discovered a mosquito bite on her ankle, obviously this was the bed bugs doing! she was too scared to go back to bed in fear of the dreaded bed bugs!

chloe

My mom told me that if I didn't wash my hair black widow spiders would come live in it.

grew up in Nebraska

I used to LOVE pouring salt on slugs and watching them bubble and sizzle - until my Mother told me that slugs could jump! I never felt safe after a rainstorm again... Love ya' Mom!

Lisa Lynette

I always thought that roaches were out to get me, especially at night. I would put my sheets and blankets in different ways so as to either trick the roaches or keep them out. To trick them, I would put the sheet on bottom and an afghan on top. To keep them out, I would put the afghan on bottom and the sheet on top. I don't know how I decided on which method per night.

Jessica

When I was a little girl, my cousins and I would tease one of our younger cousins who believed that worms were snakes.
Everytime we would get a good rain night crawlers would scatter all over the ground and pavement. We would
then tell him "look out there's a snake" "Hey there's another one" He was terrified!!

Julia

My daughter was 4 and went with her grandparents to their camp. She saw a large spider and her grandmother told her it was a "Grand Daddy Long Legs".When we arrived at camp she excitely tried to tell me about the spider and called it a "Long Legged Mother". She is still teased today.

Linda

I used to believe that the bite of a maggot would kill you. I was scared to go near the garbage can because maggots sometimes hatched under it.

Kimberly

When I first arrived in Australia in 1973 and my parents and I made our first visit to Queensland's famous Gold Coast beaches, we were warned to "Watch out for the stinging bluebotles" as they can be fatal. - We spent the whole day anxiously looking upwards for huge flies with killer stings. It wasn't until later that we learned that the stinging bluebottles were actually a rather nasty kind of jellyfish!

Alan

I used to think that people were supposed to cover their mouths when they yawned to keep spiders from crawling in. This only applied at night for some reason... and I was always afraid that if I forgot to cover my mouth, a spider would hang down from the ceiling and drop into my mouth.

your cat