I own a Venus Flytrap. In my opinion, carnivorous plants are very fascinating. Though I do occasionally put it outside, it spends most of its time indoors on my bedroom windowsill. I'm curious to know, how can I catch insects for it to eat while it's indoors?

How long have you had it for? Every time I buy one of those it tends to die fairly quickly. I've got one that died back a lot (though I guess it's supposed to, it's winter now). On the other hand, a pitcher plant I got has been unfurling much better.

His name is 'Fang' & I've only had him for a week (Christmas present). I remember reading somewhere that if you keep them indoors, you do occasionally have to feed them. Apparently their preferred food is spiders, ants & beetles (alive, of course), but you can't always find those things indoors. Any ideas on how I can locate & catch insects for 'Fang' to eat while he's inside, since he doesn't seem to be catching anything outdoors?

What about those sticky strips used for pest control...like flypaper? They would catch a bug for you with no pesticide. I recall the flypaper in my gramma's kitchen generally had flies that were still flapping their wings.

Why catch bugs yourself when pet stores do it for you?

Sticky flypaper! Great idea! Now I just need to find a shop that sells it. Hey, Anton, do you mean pet supply stores? If so, do these places usually sell small live insects?

Sticky flypaper has chemicals on it. Might kill Fang.

All it needs is protein. Go with small pieces of ground meat. It won't care if its protein wiggles or not. If you want to trap insects, try some honey.

According to this advice you should not feed raw meat to Fang (great name) and as he doesn't need to eat more than once a month he'll probably catch enough food on his own. That site has quite a lot of good advice, not just on the Venus Flytrap page, so it would be worth reading it for general info.

I spent a lot of my childhood fascinated by the local bogs and the carnivorous plants which grew there - indeed my school used to organise field trips in the summer so we had a good chance of seeing them in action. There are bogs in the New Forest where Sundew grow, including an area near a place called Nomansland. I used to wonder if it was called that because the plants had eaten all the men and it wasn't surprising that The Day of the Triffids scared me rigid.

The ones that sell spiders and scorpions do. Might be only crickets though.

Interesting conversation! I have never seen a carnivorous plant...

They don't need bugs too often, so maybe if you take it out every once in a while that'll do. I know that to close their traps, they require a lot of energy and can only do it a few times before dying. I think giving it too many at once is bad too -- that's what I did.