[jQuery] Color animation on textarea

[yabado]

I am trying to apply a color animation to a textarea when text is
appended to it.

Here is what I have...

HTML:

<textarea id="reply"><textarea>


JQ:

$("#reply")
                .animate({backgroundColor:'red'}, "fast")
                .append("\n"+insertText+"\n")
                .animate({backgroundColor:'white'}, "fast");

This is not working, what am I mssing? The color does not change at
all?

TIA