When I...
...was roughly eleven years old, a friend and I used to sometimes spend our lunchtimes in the school's science department visiting the stick insects that lived there in a big Quality Street jar.

One of the stick insects was a peculiar fat brown one which my friend and I named 'Cigar'. Well, once when I was feeling a bit silly I pretended to 'smoke' Cigar. Now Cigar, for reasons unknown to me but probably connected to him not actually being a cigar but a stick insect, began to spazz out. This scared me somewhat and sadly I dropped him, whereupon two of his legs fell off and within a matter of minutes he was deceased.

I didn't know what to do but bravely picked up the scattering of his body parts and put them back in the Quality St jar. Since no one else was there at the time it could never be proved I was the stick insect murderer, but the fact that I never once afterwards went back to visit the stick insects in itself spoke volumes.

Apologies for twisting the question slightly.
( The Helpful Bear, Tue 7 Jun 2005, 10:46, Reply)