Novia11 Badnews, you purchased your plant from someone who doesn't know carnivorous plants. NEVER feed raw meat to them. Feed them only insects tht could crawl or fly into the traps. Also, you need to use distilled water or collected rainwater for watering. Put the plant on a window that gets sunlight all day long and it should be fine. You can cut off the top of a soda bottle and put it over the plant or a DIY terrarium. Dollars stores often have small glass bowls that also work. Lastly, if it dies back, leave it be for a bit. Venus flytraps need to go dormant and they often regrow from their rhizome if they're not too damaged.

Most definitely NOT a VFT. I think you've got some kind of herb (maybe pineapple sage???) Did you end up with little red flowers? I want to try my hand at growing VFTs as well and have been reading up on how to germinate and grow these fascinating plants. Here's a link I found very helpful about how to grow these guys. I just ordered some seeds on eBay, so we'll have to wait and see what comes up. BTW, you should be able to find photos of actual VFT seedlings online. They look just like mini VFT. Here is a link that might be useful: Venus Flytrap Info

So i am moving my VFT outside and hardening it off. it seemed to be doing okay indoors for a few months but then the leaves started turning black and mushy and dying. i am trying to save it. there are still quite a few green leaves and stems on it. Ive only had it about 5 months and it is in the small plastic pot that it came in with that same potting soil. i water it with only distilled water keeping the soil moist. i read that they need high humidity levels and that they normally live in bogs so its pot should be submerged several cm in distilled water at all times mimicking it’s natural habitat. I’m not sure where i read this but i have been doing this. Now im worried that i have drowned my plant. should i repot it in perlite and sphagnum moss and move it outdoors?

I got my Venus flytraps in and they were potted in perlite and sand and some vermiculite and other junk- probably sphagnum peat moss. I pulled media away from the roots and found that every plant had some really bad roots in that mix, so I put them all in the re-wetted sphagnum moss I used to grow my orchids in and all the venus flytraps are growing new roots and they look SO much better. The roots were all black and rotted looking, but each flytrap had a new root or 2 that were coming out when I saw the corms after rinsing them off. I figured the sphagnum moss would keep the roots moist but give good air flow and it seems to be the best thing for them so far as each plant has grown very well despite getting sunburned badly. I guess I lucked out since it was so close to dormancy the plants recovered leaves quickly and new traps also. Even the tiny VFT 'pink ' is starting to grow new trap leaves but all of them are going dormant and I can tell as the leaves take minutes to close instead of seconds now. The traps are large, but the leaves are small and very full and the color on most is still green as we have had snow here now for the past 3 days and all the new growth has missed the full sun since I was afraid to burn them again. I recommend potting in the re-wetted sphagnum moss or long fiber sphagnum moss that lowes or home depot sell- just make sure it is all fertilizer free with no additives as that can kill carnivorous plants. Also, I use rain water to water my carnivorous plants and they do better from rain water than distilled. You can re-wet the dried out sphagnum moss by soaking strands in a bin or bucket of rain water then layering them on top of each other in the pot. Once you have wet moss about half way up the pot, I put the corm or bulb in the middle with roots draped in a circle to keep from damaging them and then trying to stick the new roots right into the wet moss so they grow better. I drape more moss around the sides of the bulb in a circular motion so it is nested in the middle of the pot and so far, that has worked well for me. Last thing- you can sometimes get sphagnum moss to start growing if you let the pot sit in rain water when the plant is actively growing- they normally grow nested in a nice sphagnum moss bog which will keep the environment more close to what they are used to. I have new sphagnum moss growing in the wet dead stuff in the pots and I hope it grows big enough to keep the cp's roots moist and help them grow vigorously.