When I got to my feet and looked at the top of the kitchen table, I almost panicked again. But this time the pause worked and I got better results.
Alive or dead, the gunk was the most powerful desiccant I'd ever heard of. It had drunk up the water in the carrot pot, sucked the surface moisture from my finger and then spent the past few hours feeding on the humidity in the air.
It was thirsty. Like alcohol has affinity for water, this stuff was the same way, only more so. In fact, it even reached out toward anything that had water in it—like me.
That's why it had oozed over the pan the way it did.
hat's so frightening about that, I asked myself. Plants grow toward water.
But plants are alive!