They try an experiment and discover that Norman’s plant also eats socks, except that Norman’s plant prefers clean socks, and Michael’s plant only eats the dirty ones. That’s how Michael discovers that his plant is actually eating his socks. The boys suspect that someone is stealing them, so they try to sit up at night (disguised as a robot and a gorilla, as if that would help) to find out who the thief is.

With Michael’s messiness, he often has to dig out his dirty socks from the rest of his stuff, but even after Michael cleans up his room, he still can’t find all of his socks. It starts when socks start disappearing from Michael’s half of the room. The boys have fun with their plants, treating them like pets, but soon, it becomes obvious that these aren’t normal plants. Michael is more experimental, dumping plant food on his plant haphazardly and even giving it bits of human food from time to time. Norman is very regular in his habits, watering his plant daily with his squirt gun and giving it the proper amount of plant food. The seeds come with a set of instructions, but Michael soon loses them, and the boys are left to care for their plants themselves. He plants one himself and gives one to his brother to plant. One day, Michael gets a couple of seeds in the mail that he doesn’t remember sending away for. Often, by the time these things arrive, he’s forgotten what he sent away for. Michael also likes sending away for random things in the mail, like toys that require him to save a certain number of box tops. Michael’s always saving random things that might turn out to be useful later, although how useful they are is questionable because it’s hard to even find anything in his pile of junk. Norman is a neat freak, and Michael likes things messy. Michael and his younger brother, Norman, share a room, but it’s not a peaceful arrangement. The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks by Nancy McArthur, 1988.

The plant that ate dirty socks series