On April 15, 1995, three members of the Bay Area Carnivorous Plant Society pleaded guilty to smuggling more than 200 flesh-eating plants from Asia into the U.S Fellow carnivorous plant lovers understood the smugglers' motives. "Carnivorous plants can really give you an obsession," said on. "It just grabs hold of you once you start growing these plants. I started out with a Venus flytrap 35 years ago...You get one and you want another one." Reporting for the San Francisco Examiner, Tanya Schevitz explains that many of the society's members "were first drawn to the flesh-eating plants by a childhood fascination with the Venus flytrap's spiked mouths."
