"Why are you sat there crying again?" my parents would ask. Aged five, I'd sit watching the dreaded programmes involving animals: Lassie, Littlest Hobo, Benji... even Dad's favourite animal documentaries - all would leave me in floods of tears. Nothing terrible had happened to the animals. I'd just worry about them getting hurt or lost. A lump would form in my throat and that was it.

But with this compassion, came a dark secret. My curiosity of minbeasts and their features turned me into a mega-monster... a megabeast! I meant no harm of course, but I couldn't resist exploring 'What would happen if...?' scenarios. In one foul swoop, I went from being Dr Jekyll to Mr Hyde and vice versa. I would carry out my experiments with excitement, but that then deteriorated into mortification and tears. I hadn't yet grasped the concept of life and death, and couldn't understand how my actions led to the death of such tiny animals.

I can recall many scenarios of these experimentations and their outcomes. As an adult, I'm horrified at the sadistic nature with which I carried these out.

The fascination of a large beetle that had toppled over onto its back on a park path, as my brother tried to make it move faster using a stick. We'd giggled watching its legs wiggling about. But feeling sorry for it, I used my stick to try and get it back on its feet again so it could go off on its merry way. But disaster struck.

In my hastened act, I'd accidently squashed its stomach with the stick, looking on in sheer horror as gooey-cream exploded from it. I'd dropped the stick and ran.

My parents consoled me over the horrific experience. They explained that some minibeasts had hard shells to protect their outer bodies.

I thought that playing with a ladybird very carefully would cause no harm - as long as it didn't roll on its back. The ladybird, discovered on the same park-path as the beetle (RIP), fascinated me with its bright, scarlet shell and bold, black dots. To me it looked so beautiful and yet so strong and powerful with its glossy colour. Its shiny shell had enticed my finger to feel and stroke it.

But disaster struck again.

I threw a tantrum as the ladybird tried to scuttle away out of my reach and in a bid to stop it getting away so I could have the pleasure of feeling its shell, I'd pressed too hard. Crack - followed by a piercing scream (I thought at the time that is was the ladybird screaming), that led my parents to come running over thinking I'd been seriously hurt. It was that day in the midst of my neverending floods of tears, that I'd decided to steer clear of any animals with hard shells.

My attention turned to the beautiful butterfly. The wonderful array of patterns and colours on their wings delighted me, reminiscent of fairies I'd read about in stories. I'd become curious about wings, wanting to know what they felt like. So imagine my sheer joy stumbling across a butterfly landing on a leaf in my garden and being able to cup it ever so gently in my little hands.

The butterfly fluttered for what might have seemed like an eternity to the poor trapped soul but I wanted to keep it for ever. Eventually it'd stopped moving and this was my chance to finally feel the wing of a 'fairy' without it escaping from me. I thought it'd gone to sleep.

I loved the silky, delicate baby-powder texture on my fingertips. Then, the sleeping butterfly's wing had torn and crumbled.

But my distraught memory of destroying an animal's limbs was soon forgotten when a new boy started in my infant-school class. Daniel was interested in minibeasts. He too was a megabeast like me, leading me into new explorations. One of these was trying to catch Daddy Long-Legs - pesky little creatures!

Daniel and I tried to catch them. I was never successful, but Daniel was. I remember him pulling a leg.

"My big brother said it's ok cos it can still move cos it's got lots of other legs!" I remember him saying to me as he saw my lips beginning to tremble. "You can hear it say ouch and then giggle!"

But I couldn't hear anything when he took off another leg to prove it to me. Daniel decided that I had to do it myself to hear. So I did. But the only thing I thought I heard was a snap and then a scream (my scream of course). That day, Daddy Long-Legs were added to my repertoire of no-no's to play with.

It didn't stop there with Daniel. There was one day when Daniel's big brother was out on his bike with his mates "looking for girlfriends" as I remember Daniel telling me. We'd taken the opportunity of his absence to go into his bedroom and play with the Meccano models he'd made and, in our explorations, we could hear a faint buzzing sound. Like me, Daniel was terrified of bees, which, we both agreed, reminded us of tiny, fat bulbous tigers with a haunting buzz instead of a roar.

Finally discovering this bee on Daniel's brother's pillow, he'd grabbed a can of Old Spice body spray and started spraying the bee. We watched fascinated as it bubbled up and foamed and went grey. We covered it with a glass, terrified that it would get bigger as it seemed to be doing at that moment in time. We realised later that it was the froth of the spray that had made it look like it'd been expanding.

Tadpoles were another species I never meant to hurt. At the age of seven, there was a tank with them for us to observe how they formed into frogs. I loved the story of the Princess and the Frog, so I tried to kiss a tadpole. It carked it.

Funnily enough, ants got away with it. They would never face my innocent, sadistic behaviour. I always avoided stepping on ants. They were so busy and pre-occupied, I left them to it, just sitting on the concrete observing their speed. Tons of them! Crowds of them! Ants seemed to be doing things. Busy, busy, busy.

I didn't like flying ants though.

33 years later, I am the owner of four cats, two dragon lizards and a hamster. But I still fear the minibeasts - which are megabeasts to me! The very small creatures that I had tormented to their death (not intentionally - only inquisitively), are now the ones I run away from and scream if they come near me. I fear them. And I fear that one day, they may gather the strength to rip my limbs off or squash me or kiss me.