Venus Fly Trap: Week Whatever

The action in the terrarium is hardly worth reporting. It’s looked the same for several weeks now. Every time a leaf grows to a certain size it keels over and dies. Then another leaf starts growing on the inside and the cycle begins again. I put it outside in the shade on a hot day to evaporate some extra water, and when I came back for it one of the leaves had little bite marks all over it. I took the plant aside and explained that it is supposed to be eating the insects and not the other way around.

On another note, I let my dog out while I was sautéing a milky green squash to find him on my porch minutes later with a skunk carcass in his mouth. The skunk has been decomposing at the end of our driveway for more than a week now, and the smell alone has been enough to discourage me from biking if only to avoid passing it.

Now that the smell is wearing off a little and the skunk no longer resembles a skunk, Bear thought it would be a good idea to stop traffic and risk his life to acquire this savory morsel of rotting flesh. My neighbor brought him over, the flattened road kill dangling from his smiling snout. It looked like something that fell into the bottom of the oven and was left burning for several years. Bear tried to bring it into the house, but we got him to drop the skunk remains on the porch before he went inside.

I wasn’t sure what to do with it, so I took our kitchen broom and swept it off of the porch. Then I disinfected the broom with vinegar. After that, I disinfected the porch with vinegar. Then my brother hosed the porch. He removed the skunk with some sort of fireplace tong, and then we disinfected the tongs with vinegar. My brother sprayed his body with Lysol. Then he Lysol-ed his shoes.

It will be a long time before I feel like my porch is sanitary enough to walk on. It will be an even longer time before I think my dog is sanitary enough to kiss.