Last fall the condo board asked me to trim the grass and tidy up the area around the composter that I use to dispose of fruit and vegetable peelings. To my surprise, there was a group of large Venus fly traps growing behind the composter on the shady side. Venus fly traps are carnivorous plants that lure flies in using a sweet substance, then clamp down and digest them. But looking closer and I saw that these plants had slices of pie in their mouths. I smelled apple pie, my favorite! Reaching out to grab the pie, and the plant clapped down its mouth nearly taking my finger off before I retracted. It was a close call. Then I realized that it was not really apple pie, but a kind of plant-mimic of apple pie, that it must have acquired from the old apple seeds I throw in the composter. The other plants had blueberry pie, strawberry pie, and coconut cream pie... all fake, all deadly. Clearly these plants had evolved to trap humans in their poisonous maw, and I had nearly fallen victim. I actually took a photo of the plants and was about to post that on my blog, but then I recalled a pair of old shoes with the socks still in them back near the compost... and wondered what might have happened. So I erased the pictures off my phone and just posted this painting instead. That way, if needed, I can deny the very existence of these... Venus Pie Traps, as merely a figment of my imagination. So goes another entry of my Curio Folio of amazing new things taking over the world!
Curio Folio: Venus Pie Trap, watercolour 4 x 7.5" cold press, March 2026 (No. 5077)
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