FlyTrapCare Forums

I went outside to check on my carnivorous plants about a week ago. When i saw them, they had pieces torn off them! There were pieces of sundews, traps of venus flytraps, leaves of my butterwort, parts of pitcher plants, and the pitchers had the tops riped off and holes in them. What did this? At first i though it was the rain, but today my butterwort is gone, and more damage has come to my pitcher plants! Please can someone help!!??

Birds, raccoons, opposums... Neighborhood kids. I'd check the torn edges - if you see claw marks that tells you something. If not, probably birds going after spaghnum.

Squirrel and chipmunk are very destructive too...

This year I had a bird land on my nepenthes and put it's beak inside of a pitcher that had the top off of it.. he made a mess of the dead bugs and what not!! Last year while the birds were going after my sphagnum they chopped off a vft flower stalk.. I ended up putting plastic forks in my pots and it seemed to help??

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A paintball gun and a good hiding spot. You'll eventually catch the culprit.

Abeginner, plastic forks? I've never heard of such a thing. I'm guessing they go fork side up and poke intruders?

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I've seen people use forks to protect vegetables- keeps birds from landing - spooks them

Cool, that's a cheap trick to try. I might try that with my strawberries.

Thanks!


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I'm guessing it's either birds or squirrels, after what you guys told me. Why would they rip plants? For the insects? Do you think they took my butterwort out of the pot? If it helps, they are all in one large pot, and the butterwort was right in the middle. Any way to stop them, apart from using forks?

If they're going for sphagnum moss, it's for nesting. They might be going for bugs, but sometimes they're just curious what the plants are. The squirrels around here have been more interested in digging in the dirt than in my plants...either hiding nuts or trying to find nuts...they can never remember where they put them. I've had birds pull whole VFTs out of the dirt and then just leave them laying there to dry out and die after they saw it's nothing interesting.

Moving my plants away from trees and fences where the birds could perch, and watch them helped. I doubt the forks will work. If birds really want to get at them they will (maybe it depends on the type of bird). The only thing you can do if they won't leave them alone is bird netting and/or build a cage around them. I also just read you can put out red christmas tree bulbs before your tomatoes come in to teach the birds that they're not food. Maybe you could come up with some kind of decoy CP.

If your nepenthes has dead bugs all over probably bitds. That happened to me too.

Could i maybe put netting around the edges of my pot just to stop them perching? Since you've seen birds throughing venus flytraps, i'm guessing that's what they did to my butterwort . I dont have a nepenthes, i have a sarracenia barba and a psitticana( i think thats part of it? ) as pitcher plants. My sarracenia barba is the one that has suffered the most damage out of the two.

Does it have digested insect out of the pitchers?

hollyhock wrote:Squirrel and chipmunk are very destructive too...

I ran into that problem myself. My .22 PCP airgun takes care of that. Haha
I think they've learned not to mess with my plants by now.