birds

When I was about seven, I was utterly convinced that chickens had leaves and trees had feathers.

Confused

My Mom would explain large gatherings of birds on the telephone wires as "they are having church service - they are just waiting for their pastor to show up"
I always felt sorry for the birds, because sometimes they would still be sitting there when we were on the way home from our church - and that had been unbearably long for me...imagine those poor things having to sit there even longer.
I was always wondering which one was the pastor - i would have thrown a rock at it...

Anon

when i was a kid i believed that birds go to heaven at night because i couldnt hear them and the last i'd see of them before it got dark was them flying around!!! so i used to tell them messages to send to God!! i believed it soooo intently that to this day i still wonder... could it be true?

Anon

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

steelo.belfast ireland

When I was 4, I had a bad dream that big mean owls stole my pretzels and ate them. So whenever I went camping and was eating, I would hunch over my food to make sure the owls didn't steal my food.

Amy

When I was somewhat younger than now, I used to believe that waterfowl (swans, geese and ducks) tucked their legs into their bodies when they swam. Now I know that they use their feet as paddles...

Pesky

When I was maybe 4 maybe even younger, I noticed all of the birds prancing around in my front yard. I decided that I wanted one of them...So I ask my dad how I could catch one, because everytime I ran up to them the flew away. He told me to throw salt on them. (?? who knew) So everyday I would take a salt shaker and attempt catching birds by throwing salt on them. Years later, I ask my daddio why in the world he told me to throw salt, of all things, on the bird. He said he figured if I could get close enough to a bird to to throw salt on it, then i was close enough to catch it. lol, silly, but hey..makes me smile.

Megan

When my brother and I were really young (he was four and I reckon I was five) for some reason we thought that another word for a 'robin' was 'gay'!
Goodness knows where we heard it, but we used to stand in the garden of our playgroup and shout "gay!" at any robin we saw.

Anon

One of my friends told me that when she was little she asked her mother where chicks came from. Her mother told her that the cockerel 'saw' to the chicken's egg and a chick was the result.

She told me that for years she had envisaged a cockerel staring intently at a fully formed egg until a baby chick hatched.

Katie Fox

My babysitter told me the Reason people would "watch you like a hawk" was because hawks loved the taste of toddler meat.. and would swoop down when hungry and carry you off..

Josh

I believed they put heated coils in lakes for the ducks to swim in the wintertime.

Anon

When I was young, I was upset that birds never landed on my finger like in Snow White. My mom told me that long ago, a human accidentally shocked the king bird with static electricity and his heart stopped, so now all birds are afraid of humans.

The Flamboyant Codfish

For some reason, my sister's friend used to think that birds didn't really exist, and that someone had just made them up to trick her or something......wierd

Hannah's friend's sister (don't ask)

I, a few years ago, saw birds bouncing off each other for the first time. I was in my mid teens, and i stood up, i yelled at dad, and i said "hey dad! look! those birds are fighting! look at them fight! i wonder what happened!"
and he said to me "cass, they're having sex."
and i said "oh. nevermind."

cassie

When I was around 7 or 8, we moved to a house that had chickens, roosters, horses and a few ducks. My mom told me that the way eggs turn into baby chickens is that the rooster fertilizes the eggs. (I already knew how OTHER animals with "live births" got pregnant. I never really thought much of it, but I took this to mean that the chicken lays the eggs, and then the rooster sits on them and does the deed.

I skipped grades in school, and my IQ is QUITE high (not as high as it was when I was a kid, though!) Yet I didn't actually "find out" how baby chickens get "into the egg" until I was a young adult...

Lisa

we had a neighbor down the street and they had been talking about how they had a birds nest in one of their porch plants.
one day i went there and peeked inside the pot, amazed at seeing real baby bird eggs infront of me.
i secretly stole one of them and took it hoom so i could "make it hatch".
i put it in the microwave, because i thought that would make the baby be born faster and then i could raise it.
needless to say, my mother was not happy with the exploded yolk all over the inside of the microwave!

stephanie

I used to believe that when I see a flock of birds in the sky, they have a wedding ceremony.

Mr. Used to

My grandparents on both sides grew up on farms and moved to the suburbs as adults, therefore there was always this misguided farm wisdom in the city. One of my Grandfathers used to say that "Turkeys are so stupid that if it was raining they would drown." (by looking up into the sky and filling their mouth and nostrils with rain.) As a college freshman moving to Northern Wisconsin (major farms of all types) I thought that the Ginsing fields (which are covered entirely using posts and enormous tarps) were turkey shelters.

Angela

i used to believe that if you stuck your hand out the window in a car the birds would think your fingers were worms and bite them off. so whenever i stuck my hand out the window i'd always put my fingers in a fist so they the birds wouldnt eat them!

Brie

I used to believe that budgies lived for hundreds of years, as I was told the one in the house was the same as my greatgrandmother had had. If it died, they just bought one exactly the same, and gave it the same name!

Ruth