general

I used to believe you got warts if you touched a toad.

laura

That reindeer could leap so high and far it was as if they were flying. Their zoo enclosures always had nets over the tops so I believed this until my husband told me different-always wondered why people didn't tame and ride them-what fun!

me & Santa

When my daughter was little I told her that my best friend and I had a pet camel when we were young named Clyde. We kept him in the horse pasture and rode him bareback everyday. She believed me untill she was five and I told her different.

Cat

When my parents tried to explain what an echo was, they didn't do very well. I thought it was an animal that lived in caves and mimicked you. I spent all our camping trips looking in cave to find the "echo"

Meg

I lived with my grandparents on a farm. The day pasture was on the other side of the road. Every morning, after milking, we would drive the cows across the road to the day pasture, then drive them back across the road to the barn for afternoon milking.
I used to imagine a society of cattle, called "The American Cow-de-Dow", that all the cows belonged to. Some day, there would be a bridge arching over the road, so we wouln't have to stop cars when the cows crossed. I can still see it in my mind's eye.
At first, the pigs and chickens had their own orginizations, the Pig-de-Dow, (I forget what society the chickens belonged to), but eventually, they became members of the Cow-de-dow. Their were also international branches, the English Cow-de-Dow, etc.
Can you imagine the conventions?

BoB

When I was about six I read on the front of the Young Telegraph that a new animal had been discovered which was had the head of the barn owl and the body of a weasel. Quite logically I assumed that you could breed this animal by mating barn owls and weasels. It was not until many years later that I realised the date of this particular newspaper - 1st April!

Anon

when i was a little girl my dad was a logger and he used to bring home lizards for me to play with. well he told me that they were baby dinosours and i remember sitting in the back yard one day, after i had let my most recent lizard go on his way and i was looking up and around wondering where all the grown up dinosaurs went because i had never seen one before. i figured they all must be kept in a big zoo of some sort so they diddnt go around squishing everything.

A. S.

My aunt and uncle lived on a farm. They never had any animals, outside of dogs and about a billion cats. But when I was young, I thought that there was no way you could have a farm without chickens, pigs and cows, so I figured they were just very good at hiding.

Dan

Once, when I was only 3, Mom put a great breakfast on the table but it started to smell really bad...Dad announced very ominously that there was a skunk in the courtyard and that we children were to STAY IN THE HOUSE! Dad then went outside and tracked that skunk to the pumphouse, later coming in to say the skunk was dead. Being I didn't understand what dead meant, I always expected that "dead" skunk to come back and GET ME & I no longer wanted to play outside by myself. That unreasonable fear of skunks stayed with me well into middle-age. Childhood experience must be stronger than common sense!

Annabelle Beanbag

I thought that dolphins were smarter than people. My dad tried to convince me otherwise, and said "how come they don't drive cars, then?" - I thought it was because they liked having fun more than driving cars and going to work.

Anon

I used to believe in the Raton Perez (a mouse who would take my fallen tooth and place money under my pillow). I was so convinced that he existed that I told my sister I saw him wearing pants, a vest and running around trying to find a hole to leave. Unfortunately there were no holes, so we provided a burial since he obviously must have died since he was unable to return home. We never did find his body ;o)

Christine

There was a pond we walked past every day on the way into (Primary) School in a small suburban part of the UK. One day on the way in I kept my usual date with it by leaping onto the bottom bar of the fence to look at it when I noticed a hippopotamus head. As I watched, intrigued, the head rose up as did the heads of several others of varying sizes (some very cute baby ones too) and they started performing all sorts of tricks. It was brilliant

Because we'd stopped people were curious as to why and so started gathering around us. The crowd increased and traffic started piling up and stopped for miles in either direction. And this Hippopotamus circus was named after me as I had discovered them. Our family called the pond the Hippopotamus pond as I insisted on it.

15 years later in a moment of extreme sanity I realised this had been an extremely vivid dream but it was so real to me.

Lindsay Phillips

I used to believe in frog houses. I grew up in South Carolina on land that was "rich" in Red Clay.As children, my siblings and I would pack the clay over our hands and feet,pulling out our appendages carefully so as to not tear our creation, and build what we called "Froghouses." We would then run and capture frogs and place them in their newfound homes. I was ahead of the game. I was building froghouse condos by the late 50's.Have you ever built a froghouse?

Faye Fowler

I used to believe that llamas had two heads. I was obviously convinced by the special effects in Dr Dolittle. When I first saw one with only one head I reasoned that it was a different breed. I won't admit to how old I was when I came to this conclusion.

helen

When my husband was a boy, his uncle told him about cows that were specially bred to live on hillsides. They were called "sidehill gougers" and they had legs that were short on one side, long on the other. Farmers bred them in both left- and right-handed versions, but had to make sure to put them in the correct pasture, because if you got it wrong they'd fall down the side of the hill.

Hubby believed it for years!

Anon

When I was a little girl, 3-4 yrs or so, my parents told me that the black cows and sheep had been in the fireplace, and that they were dirty.. Naturally, I believed they would be clean after the next rain fell..

Anne

When I was 7 I was very into the animal kingdom and argued with my teacher for the rights of animals to have their names spelt with a capital letter eg 'Tiger' not 'tiger'. This was because it was a name - why should animals not get the right to have a capial letter st the front of their names just like humans do!?.

Scott