Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Mmmm.... maggots.

For the past 5 years or so I have had a small "lucky bamboo" plant at my desk at work. A couple weeks ago, back when I thought it was safe to drink carrot juice, I got to wondering what would happen if I watered the bamboo plant with carrot juice instead of water. I was hoping maybe the leaves would turn orange. I asked a friend at work who knows a bit about plants, and he said it would probably be good for the plant since the carrot juice contains phospherous, which is good for plants. So, one day instead of water, I used carrot juice on the plant.

Unfortunately, there was a problem. The bamboo plant isn't in any soil - it's just in a ceramic dish with some small stones holding the roots down so it doesn't tip over. So, when I added carrot juice, after a few days it started to look like a swamp. I hoped that over time it would get better as I just kept adding normal water. I figured the carrot juice would eventually break down and get dilluted enough to just be some sort of fertilizer for the the plant. Well, today, after the long weekend I came into work and went to water the plant. When I did, I noticed a fly flew out of the ceramic dish. I then noticed that floating in the water was what looked like a tiny slug. I wondered to myself how a slug would have found its way through an office environment into a small cermic dish on a shelf. Then I looked more closely at the thing and realized it was some sort of insect larva. Then I noticed there were 4 or 5 more of them floating on the water. Ewwwwwwwww!

So, I decided it was time to say good-bye to the bamboo plant. Most of its leaves had already turned orange (yay!), but then fallen off (boo!), so the plant wasn't doing so well anyhow. Plus, it was given to me by my ex-fiance before we split up, so I suppose it's only appropriate maggots eventually started growing in it. Ha!

Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera to work, so I don't have any pictures of the cute little maggots.