Chapter Seven
I suppose I had to treat the whole ‘dismantling the bunnies to eat them’ experience a bit like eating crabs, you know? You have to put in the work to get the delicious meat out! It’s a bit tedious, but isn’t crab delicious? It’s worth it, definitely.
I wonder if I’m ever going to get to eat cooked crab again?
I’m a plant so I don’t think cooking anything with fire would be particularly safe for me. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I don't know if my body would be okay with eating anything cooked. Doesn't that take out some of the natural nutrients or something? Also I wonder if this weird carnivorous plant body of mine will crave eating the shell along with the meat, you know? Huh. Maybe eating crab would be quite easy in this body then. Well, lucky me I guess! One day I’ll take a trip to the ocean (this world must have at least one ocean, right?) and try it out!
Ah but right, fire… Luckily I’m pretty deep in the forest I think, but… What would happen if a forest fire broke out? Could I maybe… idunno… Could I dig? I have these wonderfully dexterous tendrils of mine. They could maybe do it, right? I think I’ve finished dismantling the rabbits enough, so it should be okay to try. Welp, no time like the present to test it out! There’s no way I’m gonna be able to eat all these rabbits in one sitting, so I can just make a lil’ hole under me to hold my leftovers in! What a smart plant I am!
Alright!
Dig dig dig~
Dig dig dig~
Dig-
...Hrmm.
This is kinda difficult? It’s not like I can’t do it, but… Well my tentacles aren’t that thick. They can burrow into the dirt like a worm pretty well, just like my roots, but scooping is actually really hard! It’s like trying to scoop something away with a thick shoe string. It’s a little bit easier if I try to criss-cross them against each other like a net, but then it’s really hard to untangle them afterwards, and a lot of dirt ends up escaping between the gaps. Hmph. How sad! I guess it’s just going to be like this, since I’m still a tiny baby plant. Maybe when I’m bigger and my tentacles get larger I’ll be better at it. At least I managed to dig out something with all that effort, so I’ll still have a nice little hidden spot to put my rabbits in!
And I’ll be the Christmas tree that decorates the top!
It was daytime after all that hard work of dismantling and digging, so it was time to photosynthesize and rest once again. I had to spread my roots out to the sides to accommodate the hole I was sitting over, but I managed to plant myself on top of it just fine. This way I could be the door that protects my food! And whenever I need to reach in and eat more of it it’s right there! Convenient! And even better, I have a secret plan tonight! Mwahaha!
I spread out my tendrils in all directions like an octopus. They’re long enough now that I think they could almost reach the ceiling in a regular sized house. My trap for the day will be using the parts of a medium sized rabbit! Since the smaller rabbits were so close to being the perfect size for my mouth, I’ve already eaten most of them! The medium rabbits required the least effort between them and the large ones, and if I put in so much effort into the large ones then only I can eat them. That’s just the way it is. So yeah, the medium rabbits are the only option! I placed them randomly around me, maybe about half an arm up from the end of my tentacles. And then, to cap everything off I opened my mouth and let my fumes fly!
My trap is now complete!
Now I wait like a patient predator plant.
Soon some poor unsuspecting fool (probably a scavenger) will be attracted by the scent or sight of meat and come running, and then fall right into my clutches! I think my poison only reaches maybe two fifths of my tendril’s length away from me, so the bitter smell shouldn’t get in the way of the meat scent hopefully. My tentacles will grab them and pull them in until my gas has done its job, and then soon they’ll be right inside my digestive sac! I’ll have even more food than I’ll know what to do with! Aaaah, I’m so excited!
~~~
I feel really accomplished.
I also feel kinda overwhelmed!
I have too much food! Like way way too much!
I should have known that a diabolical trap thought up by a carnivorous plant would have worked super great! I mean, if you think about it, what I’m doing isn’t all that different from those plants that use something sweet or stinky to lure in their prey. This must just be in my blood or something! Or, well, sap I guess.
So yeah, I managed to do a great job! My tendrils might not be amazingly strong (yet), but they sure know how to tie something up! And so long as I can get them close enough for long enough, it seems that my poisonous gas is quite effective! Sure, it’s a little dangerous since I have to pull them towards me for the gas to work, and then keep ‘em there for a while, but most of the time they were too freaked about getting caught and the poison’s effects to really care much about me. And even if they did decide to attack me, by then they should be too wrapped up by all my other tentacles to be able to effectively reach me!
It’s the perfect crime!
I caught some snakes, some rats, a few weasels, and a badger! The badger was a tricky one; Its sharp claws actually managed to take off about four of my tendrils, but it was no match for my poison! Since it started to get weaker and slow down after half a minute it got a whole lot easier, but at the beginning it was pure mayhem. Honestly, I’m lucky only four of my tentacles got sliced. But at least I learned better ways to hold on to its legs so that he couldn’t use his claws, so all’s well that ends well! I’m just a teensy bit peeved that I had to waste a third of a snake towards regrowing my cut tendrils, but, you know… whatever. Hmph.
Oh, and the rats I caught alive actually died to my digestive acid too fast for me to get to feel them splashing around, even though they were small enough that I could eat them right away.
So unfair!
Also I’m not, like, only lucky with my trap. It was inevitable that something too big for me to handle was going to come around eventually. A wolf had shown up, sniffing from afar at me. I was really worried, because if there’s one then there’s got to be more around, right? And they’re great diggers, so if this wolf and his friend decided to raid all my food, I wouldn’t be able to stop them from uprooting me. However, I also kind of wanted to take a chance at seeing how my poison affected bigger animals, so a tiny piece of me wanted this wolf to try me, you know? Only the one wolf though; If I saw his friends coming along too then I’d have to jump ship for sure. Turns out I didn’t get the chance though, since apparently they’re not dumb enough to fall for my poison. Or maybe it’s that the tiny scrap of meat wasn’t enough for it to risk it.
I’ll have to run my poison tests some other time I guess.
I focused a lot on growing during the day (besides the little break for eating I had to take after restoring my tendrils), so by the time nightfall hit, I felt like I had grown a ton! My top layer of leaves were growing a deep verdant hue, while the second layer had grown a bit more fuzz and was becoming silvery. My petals seemed even more plush and had grown just a tad bit longer, and my roots and tendrils once again grown just a touch longer and thicker. Oddly enough, the area on top of the flap that is my mouth seemed to be growing, and getting a bit rounder like a swollen bump, and I discovered that on the back edge of it there was a small bud starting to form that would one day become a lovely little flower! My first flower! Hooray~! I wonder what kind of flower it’ll be? Ah, I can’t wait to find out! I’m going to give you all the best nutrients my new little friend~!
Okay, so, I know this probably can’t really be considered my first flower. Technically I have some petals on me already, I know that. In fact, after my two layers of leaves, I actually have three layers of petals. I’m basically a weird big upside-down flower with roots coming out of the middle of me. But this flower looks like it’ll actually grow into a proper flower shape, not whatever the hell I’m supposed to be! And that, my friends, is what's important. I hope it grows into some other pretty color than the one I already have. From what I can tell right now, the petals look quite white, so I hope that it maybe stays that way, or at least doesn’t mimic the peachy gold of that I already have on me. I like a little color variety, dammit! Ah well, I shouldn’t be greedy, since my leaves are already two toned anyways. Even if my little flower turns out to be the same color, I’ll still love it all the same, I promise!
Anyways both me and my flower won’t be hurting for food anytime soon, since I’ve collected such a large haul. Plus I still need to finish off my rabbits from before, preferably before they rot too much. I think I get a bigger return the more fresh of a corpse I eat(?), or at least it seems that way for the smaller prey, so I’m going to do my best on that. And now that my tentacles have gotten a tiny bit bigger, I bet I’ll be able to do an even better job at everything! I’ll have to test these puppies out with dismantling and digging first though, since I can barely fit all of these bodies in this hole anymore. I kept hiding them under me throughout the day since I thought that my prey would get scared away if they saw a bunch of dead bodies laying mysteriously next to the meat they were trying to eat.
Once again, dig dig dig~
Dig dig dig~
Dig-
Yeah, it’s only been a day, so of course my tentacles wouldn’t have gotten crazy better, but I can tell there’s at least a noticeable improvement in their strength. And since they’re a tiny bit bigger, then I guess they’ll be better at sweeping, too? And of course the dismantling is a bit easier since they’re stronger, so that’s good. Hooray for growing! Hooray for all the food I can eat! I’m such a genius! Number one plant in wherever the hell this is! Yes, thank you, hold your applause!
I must look like such a weirdo trying to strike all these glamor poses with this odd little plant body.
Well whatever, it doesn’t matter. Who’s gonna see me if I make a fool of myself out here? Some trees? A passing rat? Some birds? It’s night time. No one’s gonna care about a plant at night.
Oooh, but you know, now that I mentioned birds…
I know that I’ve been getting a wonderful amount of nutrients from my haul, but…
You know, I kind of miss those mega nutritious eggs.
Excuse me for a moment~!
The eggs are calling me~!