Quote[/b] ] Wingin' It: Worrisome fly-by-night 'pet' on hunger strike
JILL WING, The Saratogian
07/17/2005
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I envy people with dogs. Every time I drive by the dog park on Broadway and Crescent, I want to be out there, playing with my dog, socializing with other owners and picking up poop.
Even the dirty work has a certain attraction. Although, I'll admit, slogging around with a dog after dark in a blizzard in February doesn't have much appeal.
My late dog Blanche hated the cold as much as I did. She didn't ask to go outside in the winter unless it was absolutely, crossed-legs necessary. And then she didn't mess around stopping to smell every yellow clump of snow. She was all business.
I was so desperate for a pet of any kind several years ago that I adopted a daddy longlegs that had established residence under the bathroom sink. Andrew eventually crossed the line when I found him one day on top of the bed. I took him outside and hoped he would find a family or another place to hole up. That was eight years ago. It's been a long between-pets drought.
A couple weeks ago I gave in to my pet envy and got Gary.
I hadn't intended to get him, but he called to me as I shopped for fertilizer at Hewitt's.
Gary is a Venus flytrap. I know, he's not the cuddle-up-with, go-to-the-park kind of critter. But he's perfect for me -- low maintenance (just wayward flies), house trained, no vet bills and he's self-sufficient if I go out of town.
He lives on a scenic corner of the bathroom windowsill. I am diligent about lifting the screen every morning before I go to work so flies can come in.
But Gary has me worried. I haven't seen evidence of any meals since I got him two weeks ago. I found a dried up, dead fly stuck between the window and the screen in the bathroom and put it in one of his little leaf mouths, but he did not bite. I tried doing the same with a little moth that was similarly deceased. Nothing doing.
I thought about giving him a bite of my burger last weekend, but information I found on the Internet advised absolutely DO NOT feed him hamburger.
The other day, one of those big black flies was knocking around inside the bathtub and landed on the sill, just inches from Gary's clutches. I watched for a minute and the fly didn't even seem tempted to taste Gary's bug-attracting nectar. The fly is gone, but I didn't see any big clump sliding down Gary's stem to indicate he'd swallowed anything.
Maybe Gary has a pheromone problem. My friend Judy White suggested he might be a vegan. Should I put some peas in a blender? Would that make him cannibalistic?
I don't know what to do. I thought about taking Gary outside by the garbage cans. You lift the lid on one of those things and battalions of flies are set free. Surely one would find Gary attractive.
I'm open to suggestions from other Venus flytrap fanciers.
Jill Wing is a feature writer at The Saratogian. Wingin' It is published alternating Sundays in the Life section. E-mail her at
jwing@saratogian.com.
