During one of my recent trips to The House of Frankenstein, I met a particularly odious character in Code Enforcement. ("Odious" is on the job description of the fiends who work there.) He read my application for a permit when I watched his harelip quiver at one point and he asked if I would be a guest speaker at a local botanical club he belonged to. Puzzled, I asked what special subject I could be of help on, and he stammered, "The bog". I looked at my application and saw the section, Interests, where I wrote, "My Blog" and gently replied, "Oh you mean bLog, my blog", to which he excited drooled, "Yes, Mrs. Astor; your BOG." (I realized that The Venus Fly Trap grows in bogs.)

The look in his glass eye was a determined Chiully gaze and I wondered what he thought a lady of my fine standing would be doing in a bog. I needed that permit, though, and many fine ladies had stooped lower, so I accepted his brochure, Carnivorous Plant Newsletter. I had come to the cesspool of city life, City Hall, and I now agreed to grace their existence.

The only thing appealing about this group of carnivorous plant groupies was their headquarters. If it hadn't looked like Peter Barry's house in Newport, I might have had second thoughts. The group in attendance for my lecture, "The Venus Fly Trap and It's Place in The Modern Tea Garden", was a colorful one, indeed. Most couldn't clap as they only had one arm (most Code Enforcement officers lack one limb or appendage, not so much from battle as from simple withering). I thought the ones on the stretches the most attentive; it was as if they could lie back, look at the ceiling, and listen to my noble, still sweet voice carrying them back to better times.

My speech was short, as was their attention span. I noted that the Venus Fly Trap is of not great use in the garden as flies are more prone to zero in on the lady fingers lying out in the open and, thus, all food should be covered. The term, Lady Fingers, got the crowd rather aroused, and not in a social way. I turned the podium back to my admirer; the jeweled, Faberge' insect brooch was attracting way too much attention and I hastened my departure by feigning a speech at the Morticians' Flower Show was due. More visits to Code Enforcement are in store, but I will leave my life in the bog out of it.