Feeeeeed Me!

Laura:
To combat a bothersome gnat infestation in some of our house plants, Alex purchased a couple carnivorous plants to gobble up the little pests. I know....I know.....when you hear the term "carnivorous plant" an image of Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors may pop into your head.....

Luckily for us though, the carnivorous plants that we have recently acquired are much more demur:

Alex:
As you may already know, I like to grow various herbs for all the cookin' I do.  When we left St. Louis I went to great lengths to get rid of the gnats that moved in when I bought Laura some flowers and plants.  I bagged up my big plants and killed off and threw away all my herbs and smaller plants.  It was very sad.

So it was very annoying when I set up all the new plants here in Rochester and right away got gnats again!  In the heat of the summer we had to open windows to cool off, and in came the little pests.  Look at my poor basil plants...  they're living on the underside of the leaves!!

The plants should be two or three times bigger than this, but they're barely hanging on to life.  I have waged war against the gnats.  I have waged conventional war (clapping, sticky traps, smashing...  I just killed one as I wrote this sentence), chemical warfare (sprays), biological warfare (bacteria that infect their larvae), and most interestingly, our subject at hand, crazy space monster warfare!

Rooaaaar!

Be Warned!  Below are graphic images of bug carnage!

Proceed at your own risk

I currently have two types of CPs:  A purple pitcher plant and a cape sundew.

The pitcher forms leaves with wide open bellies filled with sweet liquid and deadly traps.  The purple pitcher doesn't have a lot of crazy mazes or a closing mouth like other CPs, but it has a very slippery and confusing gut.  Once the bug flies in, they have a hard time telling where the sweet nectar ends and the deadly digestive saliva begins.

A thousand tiny gnat screams echo through the chambers of the pitcher's unforgiving gullet

Purple pitcher plant is definitely more fun to say, but the sundew is the real killer.

Say you're a bug.  You get up in the morning and start doing your bug duties:  flying around people's faces, chewing on helpless plants, landing in Alex's yogurt, distracting the Foof while she studies...  Generally just being a pest.

Oops

After a long and obnoxious days work, you're hungry, or thirsty, or whatever the heck you get - who cares?  You're a filthy little bug.  You see sunlight glistening off a sweet orb of what appears to be delectable nectar.  YUM!  You buzz your nasty little thorax over to it and land in it, ready to gorge yourself.  BUT WAIT!  Something is wrong...  this food is a lot less tasty and a lot more sticky than usual...

And for everyone to see...  how embarrassing!

It's got you!  That little droplet of liquid is a very sticky, stringy goo that just never let's go.  Now you're fighting and pushing and flapping to get away, and as you struggle you notice that very slowly, more tentacles with droplets of goo are inching closer, leaning in toward you.  Eventually they pile on, covering you with digestive ooze, and pull you in toward the center of the leaf.  What a way to go!



I've got quite a few more pictures of these guys.  They're an entertaining way of killing off the gnats.  I'll probably pick up some more, including other types of sundew, maybe a venus flytrap, and eventually I'd like to get the ultimate: a tropical pitcher.  If I do, I'll be sure to put more pictures here.

The Lorax - hunter of the gnats