How Much Is That Doggie In the Window?

So, in days past I told you that

a) chameleons are not known for their sociability
b) sometimes you luck out and get a fairly friendly one
c) there is no real way of predicting the temperament of your lizard

Monk seems to be growing up into a fairly well behaved beast.
he's not friendly, which is a good sign for this particular beast, and he'll turn his back on you or hide behind some leaves for a while if he thinks you're looking at him too much...
but he doesn't ever gape or hiss or bite at us, he's generally happy, and in a good controlled environment.

but he does this wierd thing.
once every few days.

one of us will open his door to chuck some free range food in, and he'll walk straight over to the door, reach across to scuttle up the door and onto the top of his cage. He marches over to the window and then for 30 minutes or an hour he'll be perfectly still, doing this...



Hilarity.

He has all the proper kinds of light he needs in his cage, he just likes that little extra, i guess. his eyes follow people and cars on the street outside the window. when he's had his fill, he puts himself back in his cage and resumes his curmudgeonliness, though sometimes if i'm close by he'll actually walk over and take a march up and down my arms for a minute or two before he retires.

Getting Reacquainted

Here's the Lad these days.

First, here he is in November, annoyed because a cricket has climbed onto his back. This was just before Cagetasrophe '08 when he moved to his new-sized home and freaked out so bad he almost kicked it.



and now here is a recent one, from the beginning of this month. His colours and markings are really coming in, and they do all kinds of tricks- although he's generally happy and stays pretty bright and placid these days...

Monk's Empire Strikes Back

Three months since I posted here. One of my friends has demanded penance for that in the form of a formal apology- which I include here: I formally apologize.
Noone's reading this anymore, obviously- but I still want to keep this record of a lizard's life, so I'm going to write it anyway.

Really the main reason that I stopped writing is, well, see- a lizard doesn't do much. When we got into the swing of caring for him and keeping him happy, he settled into our daily routine. You don't take as many pictures of him eating a bug once you've seen him eat a hundred bugs.

And he isn't like a dog or a baby- he just sits or creeps around slowly. He's doesn't want to play fetch and he never wants you to read him a story. Still, we love him and we're pretty sure he's figured out that we aren't going to eat him, so there is a little bit of a relationship there.

So it's sort of like halfway between owning a dog and owning a lamp.

So there wasn't much to say. It was like the time between movie sequels, when all was quiet in the Empire.

Then everything went ass-over-teakettle with the chameleon.

We bought him the new cage and everything went wrong, and threw Monk into full preadolescent furious rebellion, and we thought for a while there that we'd killed the chameleon.

I'll post some pics tomorrow. He's big and (almost completely) happy again.