Day 2,385

The forest was silent and full of eyes peering through false leaves. It wasn't safe to walk there alone, even when the sun was at its peak. It simply wasn't the kind of place you should be without a second, third or fourth set of eyes and a few guard dogs to guard every potential blind spot.

It was protected by the government and several metres of barbed-wire fencing yet people continued to see it as a challenge and make it their life's goal to slip inside and take photographs of the elusive, well-guarded species therein. People had been attempting this simple feat for almost two hundred years and yet not a single ground level photo exists to this day.

The phrase "carnivorous tree" might bring to mind old calcium studies where fresh t-bone steaks were buried beneath saplings and were found to have been completely consumed. It might even bring to mind stories of people being buried holding seeds and imprints of their bodies found when the full-fledged trees are dug up.

It wouldn't be an entirely inaccurate assumption to think that trees in need of an iron-dense and protein-dense diet might be considered carnivorous and have delicate roots. It doesn't quite meet the full picture of something that was once possibly an insect, possibly a mammal, and is now quite possibly the greatest camouflage predator the world has ever not seen.

The eyes are the first thing that people notice. Trees generally don't have several pairs of eyes deeply set into surprisingly soft looking bark. Next they notice how the leaves are tipped with claw-like protrusions that have already become slightly entangled in the trespasser's hair and clothing.

It draws them in slowly, cautiously and deceptively gently until they begin to notice how the shadows around the lower half of the tree are now much, much darker. Few will notice the pitch black teeth plates inside the mouth that opens like a flower greeting the morning sun.

There's never enough time to react when its jaws have opened wide enough to fit a sizable portion of them inside. Before they can fully draw the breath to scream, it crams as much of them down as possible, snapping the two plates closed and crushing them to a pulpy mess in a matter of minutes.

It lets the liquid viscera slide down its gullet and onto the roots, to be drawn back up into leaves that are much thicker than they were a few minutes ago. The only movements now are the lower half of the victim slowly twitching in the throes of a sudden, violent death and the eyes of the tree darting about as if to dare the rest of the forest to come and claim its prey.