14. Bladderwort!

14 Bladderwort! I love Flamin' Hot Cheetos. They're my favorite kind of Cheetos, and believe me, I've tried them all. Nobody thought putting Flamin' Hot Cheetos in the garden would keep the bugs away from our

veggies, but Miss Nichol said we could try it. Nothing else had worked. We were desperate. So we tried it. We sprinkled a bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos around the garden. And you know what we found the next morning? You probably think we found a bunch of Flamin' Hot Cheetos plants. That would have been cool. But the truth is, the bugs didn't touch the Flamin' Hot Cheetos. The only things they wanted to eat were our veggies.

The wooden fence didn't work. The electric fence didn't work. The video camera didn't work. The stakeout didn't work. The bug traps didn't work. The Flamin' Hot Cheetos didn't work. Nothing worked!

"I give up," said Mr. Tony. "We tried everything. Nothing will keep those bugs away." "Yeah," said Miss Banks, "let's just forget about starting a vegetable garden." It was sad. We all got up to go back into school. But that's when Miss Nichol snapped her fingers again. "Wait!" she said. "I know how to get rid of the bugs! Bladderwort!" "HUH?" That's also "HUH" backward. We all looked at Miss Nichol. She had a wild look in her eyes. "Bladderwort!" she repeated. "Bladderwort! Of course! Why didn't I think of it sooner? Bladderwort!" Maybe Andrea was right. Miss Nichol really did need to talk to somebody. Now she was just making up nonsense words. She must be totally losing her marbles. "Are you okay, Miss Nichol?" asked Mr. Tony.

He put his hand on her forehead, because that's what grown-ups always do when somebody isn't feeling well. Nobody knows why. "Bladderwort!" Miss Nichol shouted. "A bladderwort is a carnivorous plant." "Huh?" we all huhhed.

"Carnivores eat meat," said Andrea. Then she smiled the smile she smiles to let everybody know she knows something nobody else knows. What is her problem? "And carnivorous plants eat bugs!" said Miss Nichol. "I learned about 'em in my botany class." Miss Nichol told us that there are more than two hundred kinds of bladderwort plants. They have small hollow sacs with a hinged flap on them. When a bug touches the bristles on the surface of the flap, it gets sucked inside the plant and digested. Cool! We had tried everything else, and nothing had worked. It was worth a shot. Miss Nichol went to a plant store and bought a bunch of bladderworts. We planted them all over the garden. It only took a few days for them to sprout. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking the bladderworts didn't work either. Well, you're wrong again! So nah-nah-nah boo-boo on you! It turned out that Miss Nichol was right this time! The bladderworts must have eaten all the bugs. There were no more bites taken