Allegedly, when my mother was a little girl she was shown a box of kittens and was even allowed to hold one. She was overjoyed with the fluffiness of them, she held it tightly and started to shake it. She shook the little thing so violently that it died in her hands though she was too young to understand at the time. She was told this many years later and many more years later, told me.

This troper once as a small child accidentally crushed a baby frog she was trying to capture. It was so tiny and cute that she just had to pick it up, but when her hand came down overtop of it...

The worst this troper ever did was a butterfly. He doused it in water and tried to glue it back on the window. Needless to say, it didn't survive.

This troper remembers a story about her ex's mother (whom we'll refer to as Tina. Not her name, but...) When she was a little girl, Tina got a pet kitten. She handled this kitten with care, knowing it was too delicate to squeeze like a stress ball. In fact, Tina was concerned that that the harsh Australian summer was hurting the kitten...so she put it in the freezer. For two hours. Despite being too young to understand what she'd done at the time, her family used the catsicle as an excuse to wear her down emotionally for ''decades.'' :In a tragic poetry of life, Tina passed on these family issues to her son, who this troper caught throwing puppies off a short flight of stairs onto a mattress. He ''was'' old enough to know he was hurting them, mattress or no.

I almost had a similar situation above when I was younger; I had a cat, and my friend and I would like to play with her, being the children we were. We pulled the kitten's tail to make her cry out, stuck her in the freezer, pushed her over when she was sitting, and we thought it was fun and un-detrimental. Looking back, I'm surprised that the cat I love and care for today still lived through everything before. But the past is over;:yes, I used a Bushism I love and care greatly for my cat now, and treat her with much more respect than my childish self did back then.

When this troper was around five or six years old, her budgie (with clipped wings and unfortunately named "Snowy") was running across the kitchen floor and she dived in an attempt to catch Snowy and fell on her. She then spent the rest of the day curled up in a ball.

My sister, when a little girl, once found a young bird fallen from the nest and not quite knowing how to fly. So she proudly went all "look what I found" to people around... including the family cat. Who promptly snatched the bird and ate it. She received a big lesson about predators and preys this day.

Somehow, averted with this troper's friend, whom I shall call T. In Elementary School, this T person, while outside, grabbed a frog (that was barely bigger than a thumbprint) and used this frog to scare people. He then held his hands together with this frog in it for a minute, and announced, "He died...not."

My 5 year old brother just did this with a spider he found. He picked it up to play with and accidentally killed it, and now hes sad about it.

averted (?)with this this troperette. When she was about 5 or 6, her school class went out in the woods to draw pictures of the forest. Sometime at the afternoon they crossed a (low) bridge and some boy saw a tiny frog sitting on the rail and threw it off the bridge, down onto the rocks. This troperette who thought fros are adorable carefully climbed down (it wasn't all to high, and less climbing than sliding down the mud), found the tiny frog and picked it up. I lay motionless on her hand and she believed it was dead (might have been playing dead, too) so she started to gently nudge the frog's chest, trying for heart massage. funny enough after 4 or 5 pokes the frog turned over in her hand, gave her a 'quack' and hobbed off into the underbrush. The boy who had pushed the frog down had been damned impressed and was very nice to her for the rest of the whole trip. Also, he was never seen abusing frogs again.

This troper's entire class one year turned on a classmate who kept invoking this trope on the class pets. We weren't amused in the least, especially since we were all aware that nobody in the class had ''any'' excuse (we were too old for that), and ''everybody'' worked together to try to prevent him handling them once we'd made the connection.

Although she didn't kill them when one of my neighbors was a little girl she had two hamsters she was very abusive to them but she didn't think so, when they were in their exercise ball she would kick it around with them inside like a soccer ball, she threw them down the stairs (thankfully the stairs had carpeting so it softened their falls), she'd swing them around in her arms until they went flying and hit the wall, and she'd scream at them, I informed her older sister and she convinced her to treat them better.

Another example my dog was playing too rough with one of the cats and he broke it's neck, I don't think he meant it any harm and he seemed to feel bad about it after wards as he was nudging it and whined when it didn't get up.

I am named "George" and have had to endure this line before.

This troper has wanted a pet spider for as long as she can remember. She once accidentaly did this with a house spider she was trying to tame and cried for weeks. I even dragged my family to a 'funeral'.

This troper found an ant colony under a rock. She found the queen. She then proceeded with poking it, and then, somehow, accidentally killed it. This troper has learned that ant colonies needed a queen to survive, so...

A dog this troper had once was chasing a baby bunny when he went too fast and ran over it. Poor pup was absolutely ''traumatized'', nudging the rabbit to try and get it up and whining pitifully. After that incident, he pretty much stopped chasing anything.