Flytraps Capture Bugs and More--Students’ Attention

Questions erupted the moment Teri Uyemura’s sixth-graders opened their science books Monday morning and saw the color photo of a Venus’ flytrap devouring a housefly.

“How does it kill the fly?”

“Will it bite my finger off too?”

“Does the bug ever escape?”

While the accompanying essay, “Insect eaters of the plant world,” did its best to explain the phenomenon, Uyemura looked around her class and saw more than a few doubters.

What would really drive her science lesson home, Uyemura thought, was a live demonstration of how bladderworts, pitcher plants, sundews or the exotic Venus’ flytraps actually captured and gobbled down their prey.

That afternoon, on her way home from Washington Middle School, a sprawling, 1920s building in northwest Pasadena, Uyemura stopped at a local nursery. On Tuesday morning, she marched into class carrying five bona fide Venus’ flytraps she had purchased for five dollars each.

“We don’t get reimbursed for things like that, but I feel the kids have to see how it happens, so it’s not just something they read in a book,” Uyemura explained. “If that makes it more exciting for them, then it’s worth it.”

Uyemura thought it especially important to grab her students’ interest this week because it marks the beginning of the spring semester and a new lesson plan.

All fall, the sixth grade had studied health science, learning about hearts, brains and human reproduction. From now on, they would focus on the natural sciences. Uyemura believed that carnivorous plants, which lured insects to their death by secreting drug-like poisons, were loaded with enough science-fiction-type drama to capture her students’ imagination as surely as the Venus’ flytrap captured bugs.

First came the book lesson. Uyemura called on students to read aloud while she wrote down key facts on the blackboard, her chalk slap-slapping against the greenish-black surface, her letters as neat and rounded as a sample in a penmanship book.

“You’d better be writing down all these facts because you’re going to need them for your reports,” Uyemura admonished the class.

“Oh man, I thought you said we only had to write down three facts,” grumbled a voice from the back of the room.

“No, I didn’t say that,” Uyemura answered evenly, and kept writing about how the Venus’ flytrap had hinged leaves with reddish centers that secreted a sweet-smelling liquid to attract insects. The plant also had tiny trigger hairs that caused the leaves to snap shut when the Venus’ flytrap sensed prey.

Once ensnared, the plant secreted juices like stomach acids to break the insect down into needed nutrients. Botanists who sliced open these plants had found leftovers--tiny undigested insect parts, Uyemura told the class.

In the front of the room, Margaret Gonzalez and Lupe Jaramillo scrunched up their faces and exchanged looks of disgust.

“I think those plants are nasty,” added 12-year-old Miesha McCall, who wore a pink jacket and fashionable red shoes embossed with gold trim. “I think it’s gross how they eat those flies.”

“I’d put the bug on the end of a straw and stick it near the plant,” she added. “I don’t want it to bite my finger off.”

Her friend Aisha Owens, wearing a pink warm-up suit, her long hair braided in cornrows, looked at her askance.

“Nuh-uh, it’s just a plant. It doesn’t hurt if it touches your finger,” Aisha advised her friend.

Although neither girl had ever seen a Venus’ flytrap before, they were familiar with the concept thanks to a Nintendo video game called Super Mario Brothers. In the game, players lead a little character through a danger-strewn path to rescue a princess. One of the recurring obstacles is a voracious Venus’ flytrap that pops up at unexpected moments to swallow the character.

On Tuesday morning, it was time to feed the flesh-and-blood flytraps. Uyemura divided the students into groups of six and placed a plant in front of each group.

Next, she sent a five-student expedition into the woodsy corners of the sprawling campus to hunt down aphids, ants, pill bugs and whatever else they could scavenge.

Some of the girls were aghast to learn that ladybugs also might be sacrificed as plant chow.

“Oh, don’t kill the ladybug. It’s pretty and it’s a good bug,” begged Tonique Delaney, when one of her fellow hunters captured one of the round, red insects on a grassy slope.

At first, Camea Gholar balked at touching bugs. But egged on by the others, she was soon poking into bushes in pursuit of more insects, as she cradled a lone pill bug gingerly in her hand.

“I got me a whole family,” said Shahe Demirjian, opening his palm to show a cache of rolled-up gray pill bugs, also known on the playground as roly-polys.

As the kids returned, bearing their bugs in firmly clenched fists and scoop-shaped pieces of paper, the excitement mounted.

“The students who captured the bugs get to feed them to the plant,” Uyemura announced, to a chorus of disappointed moans.

But there were plenty to go around.

“Oooooh, get in there,” the students exclaimed, helping the pill-bugs into the Venus’ flytraps with the tips of pencils.

“He’s going in.”

“Where are the trigger hairs?”

“Hey, somebody, give me some insects.”

For a moment they were silent. Then, a chorus of howls left from their throats, as group after group watched the plants snap shut, trapping the unfortunate insects inside.

One plant closed around an insect’s upper half, leaving the other end wriggling while the children clustered around in fascinated horror.

“Boy, your plant is hungry.”

“That plant tried to bite Chris’ finger off.”

Uyemura explained that the Venus’ flytraps would take at least half a day to digest their meals. Then they would reopen. Seven kids were so taken with the strange plants that they promised to bring $5 to school the next day if Uyemura would buy them each their own pet plant.

Just then, the lunch bell rang and, still flushed with excitement from their botany lesson, the sixth-graders of Room 115 headed off to eat their own meals.

Later, Uyemura would assign the class to write essays about what they had just witnessed.

Gerardo Frayre would phrase his thoughts most eloquently.

Carnivorous plants, wrote Frayre, “are a death wish for insects.”