Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/03/venus-fly-trap-habitat.html
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NC has a state carnivorous plant. Cool.
Feed me Seymore!
The hungry little plants can be found in and around the mountain bogs of Cranberry Glades, W. Va. as well.
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It’s a plant-eat-fly world out there.
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If I lived in NC you better believe I’d be rocking these plates.
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What a graphic design disaster. Executed by a first year design intern, I guess? I mean, every single design element of the plate is wrong. EVERY ONE. Except maybe the fly. The fly is ok. Possibly clipart though.
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I never realised VFTs were native to the Carolinas. I assumed they came from the Amazon or something.
(yeah yeah I know)
The “First In Fly-Eat” claim is a language disaster, too.
I cannot parse or grok what those words are intended to convey.
“First in” as in ‘first in, first out’ - i.e. ‘first in, first eaten’?
First in fly food? A state that leads in things for flies to eat?
My guess is the closest that makes sense in this context might be “First In Fly Eaters” as shorthand for “First in Fly-eating Plants” but “First in Fly Eaters” would not reflect well on the human residents of the state.
ETA unclear if the nonsense phrase is the responsibility of state personnel or Cory
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That phrase was just a riff on the phrase “First in Flight”; a sort of homonymic parody. The DMV isn’t actually using the phrase. But it did add to the overall repulsive reaction I had to the post, and the plate. Still hate it.
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Cory, then. That’s where my money was, all along. 
Sadly, homophones tend not to work so well in print. I would never have linked ‘flight’ and ‘fly-eat’, but then my English accent is probably not the one it was intended to be spoken (read) in.
Now it’s been explained to me I can see it is at least punny if nothing else, and as an inveterate punner I guess I should run away and take the blame for misunderstanding (flight-rap).
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Did you not notice that proceeds of the plate go towards conservation of said plant?
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All proceeds go to preserve Venus Fly Trap habitat, and none of the proceeds will go to the designer of the plate.
It is still an embarrassment. But it is not alone, plate design follows general graphic design, and if the audience sees nothing wrong with the plate, let them eat flytrap.
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Probably a pun that only works well on the East Coast of the US, where one is likely to have seen the standard “First in Flight” license plate from NC.
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I am down with proceeds being used to preserve fly-trap habitat; if you can imagine, people make a living digging up the things illegally from public forests and selling them to collectors. Pitcher plants and sundews as well; carnivorous plants are a ‘thing’.
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