Anymal911 wrote:Maybe because I feed them...
There was a thread here one time about trap coloration. It said that once a trap closes, the color it has then is as much as it will ever attain because once it closes and reopens, the coloration process no longer occurs. I'm not sure how scientifically accurate that is, but it does seem true in my experience. That's why I always try to leave at least a few traps untriggered. My plants are on a deck about 15 feet off the ground so they probably don't catch as many bugs on their own as most people's plants do, so I do catch some bugs to feed them occasionally, but I always try to never overdo it. That not only stops coloration, but it might also lead to nitrogen burn, the same as overfertilizing a regular, non-CP plant.
In any case, I just witnessed a rare live capture a few minutes ago. I was out on the deck and when I stood up to come inside, a huge wasp buzzed right past my face and went right through the chicken wire on my squirrel cage. It landed on the edge of a VFT pot, so I hung around to see what it was going to do. It crawled around for a while, stopping to suck some water from the damp LFS, but then it seemed to take an interest in one of the lower traps lying flat on the LFS. As it started crawling in and gobbling nectar from the base of the cilia, I thought, there's no way a trap that small can catch a bug *that* big, but it proved me wrong! That sucker snapped shut in less than a second and actually *did* enclose the entire wasp! The trap was still bouncing up and down a bit when I came inside, but it seemed well on its way to sealing, so I don't think it will ever get out. I sure don't get to witness live captures like that very often!
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