I had the same thing happen to me involving a rabbit's foot fern. Although I enjoyed watching the parents raise the 3 little chicks, my fern suffered for it. What I did this year was to suspend sea shells above the hanging basket from the bracket with fishing line. They move and clatter in the breeze. My returning parents have had a look, but so far no nests. I do keep a few birdhouses along my fence as alternatives. It may be worth a try.

I kind of disagree with you not researching it first on text material like books. Since a book can provide a wealth of information, inquiring a person will give you limited information. Its simply too much for one person to type. The reason there are books out there, and one of the best is the Peter DÂAmatoÂs book: The Savage Garden. Amazon.com will sell books at a discount price, but you can find that book in a pubic library if you donÂt want to pay say $20 or $30 for it. It usually best to research what you want to buy before buying it 1st then asking questions later. To many a newbie have killed their plants right off the bat by adding fertilizer, planting them in regular potting soil and watering them with tap water. Or simply sending them into an irrecoverable shock by exposing them suddenly to drier air, under the sun, without hardening the plants 1st. As a result more then one newbie have wasted $2 or $5 when some purchase their plants in a general store or nursery. But others have wasted $25, $50, and even $100 worth of plants they bought from a specialized nursery. The idea people go to forum to inquire to a particular problem like a pest problem and want to find someone how they handled that problem or learn what done wrong if a plant fails to grow. So if you donÂt want to research it yourself, people will think you will be to lazy to do you own work yourself and will eventually kill their newly purchased plants anyways. Now I donÂt now which pitcher plant you fed bugs and how small these insects are? Since the plants themselves sold by Lowes are quite small and lacking the digestive fluids inside their pitchers. Most likely whatÂs going to happen is the bugs are going to rot and kill the leaves. Sundews and butterwort (P. primuliflora) donÂt have catching appendage, since it is the leaves itself that does the catching. The leaves of sundews are covered with hairs and has a "dew" drop on each hair. Butterworts on the other hand their leaf surface is covered with sticky mucilage. DonÂt feed the plants, they can do that themselves. DonÂt try feeding the Venus flytrap, even if it grows new traps, it will be too weak to digest the insect. Digesting an insect takes a lot of reserve energy before it can utilize it. It may take up to a month or 2 for a VFT to recover. Now your "Should they be fed into the soil like a regular plant?", are you referring to adding fertilizer to the soil. If so DONÂT. That is a common mistake made by newbies trying to grow their 1st CPs, adding fertilizer to the growing media. Fertilizer will kill your plants, CP have a weak root system, and is mainly used to anchor the plant to the media and draw out moisture, and thatÂs it. Fertilizer will destroy that root system and eventually kill your plants. That also means not to use regular potting soil, even if part of the ingredients contains sphagnum peat moss and perlite. It also has other things like fertilizer and wetting agents. What you need is pure sphagnum peat moss and perlite to aerate the media, nothing else. Make sure it doesnÂt have any additives at all. You mix it up in a 50:50 mix. This is the true and tried growing media for most CPs. Sit the VFT, sundews, Sarracenia pitcher plants (the purple pitcher plant) in a dish with 1 inch of water. The butterwort P. primuliflora in my experience does well growing in straight long fiber sphagnum moss and likes its media quite wet. Nepenthes only require having their media most and not as wet as other CPs. Nepenthes will require a mix of long fiber sphagnum moss used for orchids, again make sure no additives and you can mix it with one part perlite and one part fine orchid bark. They like their media most but with enough drainage for their roots. Use distilled water to water them, donÂt use for any reason tap water, purified water, or drinking water. These still contain minerals that will eventually kill your plants. Second choice is rainwater collected in a bucket, followed with R/O water but distilled is still the best choice. For now have them growing in a wind sill from indirect sunlight in their own Âterrariums (aka the cubes-of-death by the CP community), lift one corner slightly to allow ventilation, checking for drooping or wilting leaves. Be careful not to let the media dry out. In a weak lift one corner a bit more, again checking for wilting and do this slowly. This way you can harden your plants to a drier environment and give the plants time to build the natural wax coating over their leaves that protects them from drier air. As they develop new leaves, gently expose the Sarracenias and VFT to stronger sunlight, keeping an eye on wilting or sings of burning leaves. Control the amount of sunlight to allow them time to harden. Although the sundew will recover the quickest, followed by VFT & Sarracenias. Neps may take 4 months to develop new leaves and even then it will not develop new pitchers. They are known to take about half a year to recover. Nepenthes, butterwort, and the sundew will do best growing under indirect sunlight or under very bright fluorescent lamps. Nepenthes especially require at least 12 hours of bright light to grow their pitchers properly, Neps are tropical plants that do receive long hours of light. That basically covers the basics but it is better to you research things 1st and read books for information to avoid mistakes in the 1st place. Good luck.

Bleach is one of the safest things you can use to eradicate unwanted plants/weeds because it does not persist for any length of time in the environment. It is amazing the amount of misinformation that gets spewed about online. Unfortunately, a lot of it remains there unchallenged and picked up, repeated and recycled and worse......often acted upon, to the detriment of our environment and sometimes ourselves. Chlorine bleach poses a significant risk to the environment, and chlorine was even used as a chemical weapon during World War I. Many countries have banned chlorine bleach or restricted its use in an effort to protect the environment and human health. As an example of bleach's persistence in the environment, manufacturers who use chlorine bleach as part of the processing, cleaning or sterilization processes often release it into local water bodies along with other liquid industrial waste. Once it reaches the water, chlorine reacts with other minerals and elements to form a host of dangerous toxins. These toxins, including dioxins, furams and PCDDs are often referred to as "persistent organic pollutants" because they linger in the water or soil and take many years to disappear. Greenpeace calls dioxin one of the most dangerous chemicals known to science, and warns that it can contribute to cancer, endocrine disorders and other serious health effects. The West Virginia University Extension also links chlorine-based compounds, like dioxins, with low sperm count, testicular cancer and breast cancer due to their ability to mimic human hormones. So you guys who are so ready to start spraying chlorine bleach all over the place may want to reconsider your choices :-) DON'T use bleach as a herbicide. It is not registered for that purpose so technically it is illegal to use it in that manner. Second it is a caustic, corrosive agent that is damaging to all manner of beneficial soil insect life, amphibians and aquatic life and any mammals it might come into contact with. It is also extremely alkaline and can negatively impact soil pH, making it difficult to grow any plant in any area so treated. If you must, use a registered herbicide - like RoundUp or similar - according to label directions. Here is a link that might be useful: bleach is not a herbicide

I don't know what it is about that plant but my cat loves to eat it and then she she throws up usually on my bed!!! Grrr. I keep my bedroom door closed now. I have had my palm for over 20 years - the stalk is as skinny as a pencil and nothing I have done over the years has made it grow wider. I have the plant in the corner in the kitchen and because it is so tall I figured Lucy couldn't reach the top of it. How wrong I was - Lucy is like an acrobat trying to get to those fronds. She will do anything including hanging upside down from my curtains to bite the top of the plant. If I don't catch her she eats all the points off the fronds. Every summer I can't wait to get that plant outside. I cut all the top back and the new growth is always beautiful and the plant loves it outside. My palm has done so well outside so now I am faced with a dilemma. My palm had a baby! Sprouting up from the bottom is a beautiful new addition. I have had this plant forever and it has taken this long to get another offshoot. Now what do I do? LOL I can't hang my plant because it is over 3 feet tall. If I bring it in Lucy has easy access because of the new plant growing at the bottom and I don't want to lose it. I have no place to put this plant in my house that Lucy can't get into or where there is enough light. LOL I have to bring this plant and also my Christmas cactus which Lucy loves to eat too inside in the next couple of days. We avoided the frost last night so I have to get it inside or I will lose the plant. I have been worrying about what to do but then today I thought I will go to the hardware store tomorrow and buy some screening or chicken wire to wrap around the base. Won't look so good in the kitchen but will hopefully keep Lucy eating it and throwing up. Darn cat - I received a hostest gift of a bouquet of flowers for my Thanksgiving table and there are pieces of palm in the vase. I woke up the day after finding Lucy had gotten up on the table and knocked the vase of water all over my wooden table just so she could get to that palm frond. I had to blow the hair dryer on the table so I could get rid of the white splotch that spread over the table from the water. I then put the vase of flowers on top of the fridge and she went up there to get to the palm and now I have it in the bathroom and she scratches at the door to try to open it. What is it with that plant and why are cats attracted to it? I have lots of houseplants but Lucy only goes for the palm and Christmas cactus. Chloe doesn't bother with any of them. Good luck with your hanging basket CB - I hope it works for you. LOLOL Anne