animals: creepy crawlies

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.

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!!

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.

My grandmother told us in order for us to stop whistling, that when we whistle at night we were actually calling snakes to us. I think I was about 13 years old when I finally figured out what she had done.

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.

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!

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.

My older cousin told me that the average person swallowed 7 spiders per month from sleeping with their mouths open (so the spider would crawl in). It took years to realize that couldn't be true.

Whenever we would squish spiders in the house my brother and I would flush them down the toilet and he always said to be careful when I sat down to go to the bathroom cuz they might be coming back up to get me. Sometimes at night when I wake up and go I think about that and it still gives me the creeps.

When I was about 5 years old, I thought that grasshoppers liked to live in water. Needless to say, all of my captured grasshoppers ended up dead until I learned otherwise.

As a child, I was told that if I were to kill a group of ants, it would start to rain. Still to this day I watch where I step if I don't want it to rain.

I used to believe…

whenever I spotted a dock spider or leach up at the cottage (these are both large to begin with) I used to imagine that there must have been a mother to each of these creatures that was at least the size of me! Believing these giant mother insects might be residing under the dock, we also avoided stepping on the cracks between the dock planks so she wouldn't know we were there.

i used to believe that if a lizard's tail drops into your ears you'll become deaf

When I was about six or seven one of those big black ants bit me...and I started screaming, my mom and one of my older brothers came running in to see what was wrong. When they found the ant and got it off they said it was a "Pouting ant", it would only bite you if you were pouting....needless to say I WAS pouting about something at the time...but I was much more careful from then on...those pouting ants can hurt!

When I was little, I was playing outside and something got under my shirt and I ran in the house crying. My mom located the bug, which turned out to be a grasshopper......I didn't want to go outside again as I thought the same thing might happen.....in fact, I told my mom that I wouldn't even go out in the winter time. When she asked why, I told her that there would be "snowhoppers"!! Mom laughed, I didn't think it was so funny!

When I was about 5 years old, I found a worm in the backyard. Me being me, I wanted it for a pet. Of course, my mother didn't want a slimy invertebrate in the house so she decides to tell me that all worms grow up to be snakes. I actually believed in this until I was in fourth or fifth grade.