Venus Flytrap

No very small animal can be beautiful, for looking at it takes so small a portion of time that the impression of it will be confused. –Aristotle

Surely Aristotle’s wrong.  If a Venus Flytrap isn’t beautiful, it’s not because it’s small.  When I hovered over the green carnivorous plant I gazed at its pearly white flowers just beginning to bloom, the olive green stems, spidery lines protruding from its mouth, and the Valentine’s Day pink on the inside of its well disguised mouth.  The plant was miniscule in size compared to the full-grown red oak standing beside it.  Its baby-sized leaves were smaller than my thumb.  Yet whether or not its size was a factor, it held the attraction of all those around it, myself included.  My eyes were fixed on its seemingly increasing beauty.  Its mouth widened until it was fully extended with its needlepoint teeth pointed towards the sky.  The flytrap remained frozen in time for hours imitating a magnificently carved marble sculpture.  Its leaves smelling of sweet perfume tickled my nose.  I couldn't even glance at the plant and without being drawn in by its beauty.

Within moments of becoming entranced by the Venus flytrap its mouth snapped shut in less than a millisecond.  The fly that had been hovering above it just a second before had now vanished.  The Venus Flytrap snatched away the life of the flying creature within seconds.  I watched in disgust as the insect writhed from within the mouth of the plant, its acids slowly killing the fly.  The pointed teeth-like lobes of the plant closed around the fly creating a barrier between it and the rest of the world.  The fly squeezed its legs through the lobes of the plant like a prisoner with his head between the spaces of a jail cell.  The plant finally fully closed its mouth with a fly leg or two still sticking out of the corner of its mouth.  Very slowly enzymes were released into the stomach of the flytrap and the fly was devoured.

Within the beautiful disguise of the Venus Flytrap sits a repulsive and ghastly interior.  The heart of this creature is quite dreadful and grotesque.  It manipulates its prey by attracting it with its florescent colors and sweet smell; then turns on its prey with a split second, and it is trapped beneath its lobes like a mouse trapped by a cat.  Aristotle notwithstanding, this has nothing to do with size but with unseemly proportions and the reminder that need so often vulgarizes form.  The intentions of the Venus Flytrap corrupted its beauty.  It was transformed in my mind not like a butterfly from something trivial and bland into something magnificent, but from something magnificent into something vulgar and crude.