The secret to growing a man-eating plant is the same as it is with any plant: you must enrich the soil.

First, invest in blood meal. Not a five-pound sack from your local florist. Enough to fill half an oil drum. The other half will be filled with regular potting soil. Get the indoor/outdoor mix, because you'll want to grow this beast in private.

If blood meal isn't available, bone or meat meal will do the trick. But you want the blood meal if you can find it. It's got more protein. And it's the blood the man-eating plant wants as it develops. Not the meat. And certainly not the bones.

Regardless, you need to feed it from the get-go. As a seedling, the man-eating plant won't bite. You can safely use your hands to plant its evil seed in the soil. You'll want to place it deeper than most seedlings or bulbs. Go as deep as your elbow, at least. The deeper, the better. A good man-eating plant needs a deep root structure to anchor it in place when the man it's eating flails and fights for its life. So the deeper the seed, the stronger the root system. This is why you need so much blood meal. The man-eating plant doesn't care where it gets its blood. Whether in the hellish depths of earth or in the burning shine of the sun, it only thirsts -- at this point -- for blood protein.

Keep your drum in a warm, dark place and let it fester for several weeks. Keep away from it.

Most blood meal is composed of the waste derived from slaughterhouses. This does the trick to get the plant in its fetal stages to sprout its spiky white roots. But because it's not the blood of man, it deprives the plant of its core need for human nutrients. Therefore, in utero, the plant will grow chaotic and angry in the drum as it takes shape, laying down its foundation by thrusting its roots and feelers wantonly around the bloody soil until one stem manages to pierce the surface.

At this point several steps need to be taken.

First, you must provide a light source. The man-eating plant cannot grow further without the photosynthetic fuel of sunlight.

Next, you must provide a food source. The man-eating plant will wait no longer. Blood meal no longer does the trick. It now requires man meal.

Exercise caution. The man-eating plant does not have the capability of understanding the function of a keeper, feeder, guardian, gardener, collector, or parent. You will be its god, providing its sustenance, but the plant will not worship you. It will see you as food.

Since the plant is a child in want of a teat, it's useful to feed the plant children. They are easy to lure into the plant's reach. You don't even have to lie. Tell the child that you have a man-eating plant and curiosity will get the best of them. It does every time.

Don't worry about cleaning. The out of reach splatter will be an incentive for the plant to stretch its wiry frame to reach, just as a young philodendron will lean toward the window if grown indoors.

When the plant grows tall enough to actually eat a man with minimal harm, your job gets easier, not harder.

You can seduce scientists to visit your discovery. Or let the postal carrier in the door. Let the wife in on your secret project. It doesn't matter. Anyone will do.

But eventually, the man-eating plant will take over your life if you don't transplant it. And it's transplanting, not feeding, that's difficult.

You must provide so much food that the plant will become full. If satiated, the plant will not have the energy to eat you as you move its drum to a new location. However, it is virtually impossible to detect when a man-eating plant has had its fill of man meal. One trick is to shine a light at its stem and see if blood is actually apparent in its gullet. Another trick is to tease the creature with an extension of your own arm...like a dismembered limb that you hold from inside your sleeve as if it were your own hand. If the plant doesn't snap its large head onto the arm, you may safely move the plant.

But be sure not to take too long in transporting the man-eater. For they digest man meal quite quickly. It is recommend that you plant the creature as close as possible to its original location.

Most people will not recognize a man-eater even when they pass it by. You can safely plant the creature near a schoolyard or a library or even in a downtown alleyway. You need not worry about its meals seeing the plant coming. But you want to prevent others from witnessing the plant attacking its pray. So any place where people walk alone and in seclusion will do.

That doesn't mean that you can't see it in action, once in awhile, for old time's sake.

Send an arborist or a gardener to the scene. Bring your machete.

Even a healthy man-eating plant may occasionally need pruning. And remember: the older a plant gets, the more it needs a little help with its meal.