ALTONA, MB
This summer thousands of city people have been flocking to the countryside to trample on farmer’s fields and take their stupid selfies with sunflower plants. Now it seems, the plants are beginning to fight back. Just outside Altona this week, a woman from River Heights ventured a little too far off the highway and was eaten whole by a giant mutant sunflower plant.
“We’re warning tourists from the city to be careful,” said local sunflower farmer Jakob Wiebe. “It seems a few of our plants have mated with Venus flytraps…and they’re very hungry for selfie-taking hipsters!”
Wiebe says he mourns the loss of the young woman, but says she should have taken a few precautions.
“You can’t just come to rural Manitoba with your New Balance sneakers and vintage SLR camera and expect nothing to happen,” said Wiebe. “Sunflowers are a sensitive plant, and they don’t take kindly to having unflattering photographs of them posted on Instagram. They need their privacy.”
The mutant sunflower plants have been popping up in fields across Canada and there is some evidence that they may spread to other crops as well.
“So far the flax and corn fields are not nearly so aggressive,” said Wiebe, “but I think city people should just play it safe and stick to photographing their meals and thigh gaps like they used to.”
