The Venus Dog Trap

It began innocently enough.

I was working on the living room remodeling project (instead of blogging) like I am supposed to do. My work area is outside on the porch, and I was making lots of trips back and forth from the living room to the power miter saw, fine tuning cuts ... a shave here, a nibble there.

Flounder was supervising in his usual fashion.

Things were going pretty smoothly, ... which is a lie of course. I was framing windows with trim, cutting mitered returns, and coping moulding endings.

There is no "going smoothly" in finish carpentry.
There is angst.
There is frustration.
There is great potential for enhancing your ability to swear, but there is definitely no "going smoothly".
I'm pretty sure of that.

It was just me and the dogs, which is a good thing, because the last thing you want when you are cutting the mitered return end piece for the tenth time because the other little pieces split or didn't fit is "over the shoulder advice or commentary".

Bear (aka Time Bandit), called a halt to the work by prancing up with a chew toy and a "come play with me" look, so off we went for a little toy tossing and running around. Good ol'Flounder decided he would take a break from supervising and joined us.

The free ranging banties caught their combined attention and both dogs gave chase sending the flyers into the trees, but Hoot the nonflying rooster in the group headed for the grapevine thicket.
That's SOP for Hoot. The thicket is ... well, a thicket. Hoot knows he can lose the dogs there.

Bear plunged in, and emerged Hootless, but soon spotted Gwahir atop the chicken tractor and off he went.

Unfortunately for Flounder, not only had Hoot given him the slip, but the poor dog passed too close to the Venus Dogtrap Vine and was soon ensnared. It was touch and go for a few seconds as the hungry vine held fast. Eventually, I slipped in to assist.

You can click on that link above to go watch the video. I thought adding a video this way would speed page loading... hope it works.
(Sorry about the grunts at the end of the video, I was detangling and filming at the same time)
The cackling chorus in the background of the video is mostly due to Bear chasing chickens while the first part of the Venus Dogtrap attack is happening.

After it was over, Flounder retreated to the safety of the porch where there was no danger of vitus bitus.


Bear announced that he was never going off the porch again, and might not even come off the glider bench.

I tried to tell him it's a vine eat dog world out there ...