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.

He's getting Big...

Moulting

A frantic phone call from my wife a few nights ago- something was wrong with the lizard.

Within an hour she relaxed: it wasn't some horrible white growth taking over his entire body... little Monk was moulting for the first time. Big curves of paper-white skin came off his body. I didn't get a chance to watch it happen (the whole thing was over before I got home that night), so i don't know if he just sat there and his old skin fell off of its own volition, or if he worked it off somehow.

Either way, in the morning he was a whole new lizard- bright green, slightly more obvious hints of his adult markings, and a whole new bigger, more grownup look. It's like he shed the toddler and revealed the little kid waiting inside.
Insert poignant talk about change and growth here.
But really, just check out the wicked photos.

Raisin in the Sun

My wife and I wandered into a pet shop in our neighbourhood the other day, seeking crickets (Lizard Guy's Shop of Wonders was closed). There was a baby chameleon there. He was in the wrong sort of cage (long instead of tall, all glass, no ventilation). Seeing him made us feel good about how good we are to little Monk, and terrible about the little gaffer there in the pet shop. He was brown and tiny, sunken-eyed and shriveled, more like a sad raisin than a well-adjusted reptile. What were we supposed to do? Rescue it? Start all over again with Chameleon Number Two? We left the shop, sad. I went home and stared at Monk, green and happily lizardish, for half an hour without moving from my spot.

Tempus F*@it

Five Years.

Veiled Chameleons live five years. Seven if you're really, really good at keeping them alive. That means the little reptile has about 4 years 9 months and 3 weeks left to live.

I was thinking today about how narsty it will be the day we come downstairs and find a psychedically coloured pigeon-sized reptile dead in his cage. I guess finding your Great Dane or the Gas Meter Reader Guy would be worse. I think they say that dead pets teach children valuable lessons about the circle of life. I've never heard them say anything to the adults that have to dispose of them.

I do not know where one puts a dead chameleon. Is that a green bin item? Compostable?

He's three times the size he was when I brought him home a couple weeks ago. Makes sense... he's got a whole arc of a life to fit into that little half-decade space: speedy childhood, a couple months of crotchety adolescence, a diploma in three weeks (welding), middle age for a year, mid-life crisis for an hour and a half (starts dating outside of his subspecies, drives impractical car), a happy retirement perched in the branches.

I'd like him to live to old age, to see the whole show, you know? Yesterday morning he was growing a chunk of crystallized salt out of his nostril- a sign that we've been over-supplementing him with minerals. It isn't a serious problem, and since I noticed it so quickly it's easy to reverse, but it was still the first time I found myself less than perfectly confident that despite our inexperience we could keep the little bugger alive.




I really don't want to kill that chameleon.

Announcing

The little gaffer has a name.

Ssshhh...

I like how even The Loud and The Fast turn into The Quiet and The Slow while they are watching him.

We let friends and visitors know that the little man will probably be more comfortable if they keep their heads lower than his eye level (they naturally scramble up away from predators, so they feel King-Of-The-Hillish when they are higher than everybody else), and so just walking into the room where he lives has a certain resemblance to entering a Holy Place. We the Keepers get slow and quiet when we usher them in (unnecessarily slow and quiet maybe). They the Visitors either crouch down in a half-kneel, or sit on the little couch next to his enclosure with their head lowered.

Maybe when he's full grown we'll require bare feet and robes for all supplicants.

And then, watching him... you can't help but gentle down. His slow, careful, graceful movements and his absolute silence get to you.

I've never seen my brother-in-law more peaceful as during the 20 minutes he sat alone in the room with the little gaffer. Just watching. He didn't say a word.

The Delicate Genius

He Will Only Drink Water That Drips From Leaves: If you give him a dish of water he will crap in it but won't recognize it as the same substance that he sucks off of leaves, and he will subsequently die of dehydration, standing knee-deep in water. His enclosure needs to be misted many times daily. At some point we'll spend some money on an automatic thing that does it for us, like that magic moment in the Produce Section when the spinach and zucchini get their misty spray.

He Doesn't Like Mist To Touch Him: And while you are misting the delicate genius' house several times a day, ensure that you don't mist him directly. Anecdotally, this has caused Dead Chameleon Syndrome to set in. His home is not that big... so he just creeps over to a corner and hates you until the spraying stops.

He Doesn't Like "Loud" Spray Bottles: And while you're spraying several times a day and taking care not to spray directly on him, please remember not to use a Windex-style spray bottle, since the repeated action of pumping the spray handle fills him with stress. People don't seem to know whether chameleons can hear or not, but whether sight or sound, he clearly hates the thing. Maybe it resembles some sort of bigger, angrier lizard somehow. His famous black-freckled, he-wants-to-die colour scheme pops up like magic at the sound of it. I had to go find another, kinder, quieter type of mister. I even pump it up in a separate room in case his majesty doesn't like that noise either.

He Cannot Have Glass Walls For His Cage: Because if he sees his reflection, he will think it is another chameleon and die of stress eventually.

He Should Not Have Dirt Or Bark On His Floor: Because he may suck up bits and pieces of it when he shoots his tongue at a cricket, and then he'll die of Wood Blocking His Intestines Syndrome.

He Cannot Be Handled Often: See post of a few days ago.

Extra Crickets Will Bite Him While He Sleeps: And then he may eventually die of aggravation. No kidding.

He Might Roast Himself To Death Accidentally: While they are still babies, their heat perception isn't fine-tuned enough and, if the sunlamp is too hot, they will lie there until they have third degree burns and eventually possibly die of Infected Third Degree Burns On Your Back Syndrome.

He Must Get Enough Vitamins: If he doesn't, we'll start noticing that his leg bones and his Hat Bone will grow curvy, which is a sign that he is dying of Metabolic Bone Disease.

He Must Not Get Too Many Vitamins: Or he may die of something else.

His Mesh Must Be Soft Enough For His Sensitive Toes: I went to Lizard Guy last night to stock up on crickets and I met a sick lizard with a toe infection and a dark brown (very attractive) stressed-out coloration. All his cage mesh must be coated with something that will protect his delicate toes. Also, when he's removed from his cage, you can't grab him, because he'll clutch at whatever he's hanging on to, and all his feet will break if you pull too hard.