UFO’s, Alien Beings and Carnivorous Plants!

      As a young boy I found that another really cool upside to living in this part of Sneads Ferry was the flora. It is only in a small portion of Southeastern North Carolina and a small portion of Northeastern South Carolina where four carnivorous plants are indigenous. These four plants were the bladderworts, the Sundew plant, the pitcher plant, and the famous Venus Fly Traps.

      The bladderworts entrapped aquatic insects, the Sundew plants were very pretty with a main stalk that rises straight up with a pretty flower at its apex. At the base of this plant is a medusa arrangement of many leafy stems that run perpendicular to the ground and at the end of each stem was a sticky globular head with many short looking tentacle projections. The entire head has varying shades of red throughout and is cover by as sticky syrupy looking secretion that attracted insects.

      The insects would land on this part of the plant seeking nourishment, because the secretions appeared to be a sugary delight, only to be trapped and digested by the plant also seeking nourishment.

      The pitcher plant is so named because of its shape. The shape allows it to catch rain water, and in the mix or the water digestive enzymes is secreted. There are often red streaks patterns inside the plant, which is suppose to attract the insects. Also, the plant appears to be a more ready source of water during dryer days, and a nice place to find shade and to lay eggs.

      Once insects committed themselves to crawl or fly in, the stickiness and thousands of down curved spiky hairs keeps the insects from making their way back out. Sort of like the spikes on an in ramp of some parking lots, you can go in, but it will keep you from going out. 

      The Venus Fly Trap is my favorite. A few years earlier, my mother bought one for me from a local Woolworth store.

      This alien looking prehistoric plant enthralled me. It is structured much like the Sundew plant with a central main stalk rising vertically with a pretty flower and seed pods, and leafy stalks running from the base of the plant more or less perpendicular to the ground. Situated at the ends of these projections are the bug traps.

      The major difference between the Sundew and the Venus Fly Trap is that on the Venus Fly Trap, located at the end so the stalks, are hinged leaves with spiky looking hairs lining and sticking out on the entire perimeter of the leaves. The shape, color and design of these leaves, gives them a strong resemblance to jaws or a living bear-trap. The inside of the jaws are fleshy and on the healthier plants very red like the inside of a monster’s maul. Sticking up vertically from the inside of the jaws were usually four spikes on each half.

      The ones at Woolworth was a tiny little plant with four to a dozen medusa stalks.

      Before moving to North Carolina, I would have never suspected that the store bought ones in comparison were a puny, emaciated affair, with a miserly arrangement of leafy projections. The Venus Fly Traps in our back yard were as prolific as dandelion plants on an untended lawn. The plants in the area where we lived were large, tall, robust specimens often possessing a few dozen Medusa like leafy projections. Most of the dozens of jaws on the wild plants were much larger than the store bought ones. The jaws on the store bought ones were large enough to attract and catch houseflies. The wild cousins could attract much larger insects, such as bees and even palmetto bugs, (Giant cockroaches).

      When any insect would land or crawl into the open jaws, the jaws would be triggered to close tightly around the bug and the hairs or spikes on the outside would intertwine, just like the fingers on your hand intertwine with each other to give added strength to the grip. I have read that this adaptation of these plants is a by-product of evolution that allows these plants to live in nitrogen poor soil. This unusual adaptation provides them with their own way to supplement their nitrogen requirements. Their digestive enzymes break down the protein so that they can extract the protein nitrogen compounds from the insects it captures.

I don’t know what mechanism requires them to do this, because the area was very prolific with its diverse plant life. Thank God that the trees I often climbed and slept in were not armed with these adaptations – otherwise I could have become ‘Vinny Tartar’.

      Once I dug up one of these plants, put it in a pot and took it with me to the restaurant my mother work at. On occasion, when I went there, the owner or one of the regulars would treat me to a meal of my favorite seafood dishes or a banana split, or both.

      I brought the plant into the restaurant to thrill and wow the patrons. Many of the patrons were comprised of the local civilians and the Marines from Camp Lejeune.

Most of the people that ate there had known about and appreciated the Venus Fly Trap, and they also had a strange story for the existence of the carnivorous plants.

      The general consensus from the patrons was that these plants were originally from a different world, or mutations caused by radioactivity from and/or by an extra-terrestrial type of electro-magnetic energy from alien spacecraft. That is why the Venus Fly Trap was so named. Some of the patrons said it was from Venus, or at least not from this planet.

      To say I was flabbergasted is an understatement. I felt a mixture of emotions when I heard this tall tail from the uneducated locals and the handful of Marines sitting at the diner where my mother worked. I felt, intrigued, amused, embarrassed for the ignorance of the locals and angry when I thought of the possibility that all of them or at least some of them were collaborating to bullshit me.