Fly-Catcher Plant That Ate Rot-Gut Pete

The Fly-Catcher Plant of the Desert

• Ives, Ronald L. (16 Jan. 1938), "And Some People Believe Them! Strange 'unnatural history' tales of animals you never saw -- and are not likely to see", San Bernardino County Sun (San Bernardino, Calif.): 32, https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/47267926 
• Ives, Ronald L. (2 Apr. 1938), "You Don't Have to Believe It", Science News-Letter (Society for Science & the Public) 33 (14): 214-215, 222 
  

  Wide-eyed tourists listen around the desert camp fires to the sad tale of Rot-Gut Pete, who vanished between Salome, Arizona, and his cabin one gloomy night. It seems that Pete had been celebrating something or other at the Last Chance Saloon, and left shortly after midnight with three sheets in the wind and no pilot. A few days later, when Pete showed up missing in his regular haunts, a search party tracked him into the desert.

  Finally, at the base of a very large fly-catcher plant, the searchers found a watch, forty-two boot-nails, eleven buttons, a six-gun, a belt buckle, and two silver dollars. They identified the gun as Pete's by counting the notches. Pete it seems, had leaned against one of the fly-catcher plants, and the thing had closed on him. Later, when the plant was gorged, it had opened again, dropping the metallic debris on the ground. You have to be very careful out in the desert.