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.

He doesn't got a name again

It was Ignatius. Didn't take.

Crickets

I thought I'd feel like Vlad The Impaler, throwing live insects to a strange death every day. I thought my childhood love of The Cricket In Times Square (they don't hand out The Newbery to just anyone) would make me squeamish about sacrificing crickets to the Great Tongue. I thought it'd take some getting used to.

But then you bring them home and they rustle around making soft, horrible sounds, and they climb all over each other like the maggot/rice from The Lost Boys, and behave so loathsomely that you don't feel bad about chucking them into the ring to face the lions. Circle of life and all that.

The first night The Lizard came home, I had a tupperware container filled with crickets, egg carton pieces for them to hide in, and a whole lot of cricket food (looks like smaller dog food. who knew?). The problem with a tupperware container the size of a brownie pan filled with hopping insects is that there isn't a really easy way to open it up and get the few crickets you need. Attempting to prepare the little guy's first meal in his new home resulted in seven rogue crickets hopping around our kitchen (thanks for helping with the round-up, Trent).

I have since purchased something called The Kricket Keeper which is a clear plastic box, tall enough that the little creeps don't instantly hop out if you ever open the lid. There are two black tubes, open on the bottom and with a clear plastic lid on the top, which fit perfectly into two holes in the lid. Crickets, like evil people, prefer to live in dark tubes and so the moment they are in the box most of them crawl up into one of the tubes. The view through the clear lid down into the tube does not inspire.
All right, so a black tube can be pulled out of the lid (and a little trap door falls closed over the hole in the lid so escapees are thwarted). The right amount of crickets is easy to tap out, and then you slide the thing back in. So easy, and you don't have to lay a finger on one filthy cricket.


Did I mention that they cannibalize one another? They cannibalize one another.

They go from the kricket keeper into a tall plastic cup (so they can't hop out), where you dump vitamin powder all over them and shake them up till they are coated. Next stop is the cage floor. They aren't there for long.
Chameleons don't, as a rule, overeat. This means that it is conceivable that you may end up dumping more crickets in the cage than the little guy is going to eat. Further proof of their despicableness... any uneaten crickets must be removed from the cage before night falls, as they will torment and bite the sluggish and cold chameleon all night long. Nasty-minded insects and delicate geniuses don't mix.

Touchy Feely

Check this quotation from a Chameleon Message Board.


Chameleons should be regarded as strictly “look but do not touch” animals. Some, such as veiled chameleons are typically quite aggressive and can give a painful (although rarely very injurious) bite. Others rarely bite. Nevertheless, chameleons are solitary animals and handling is invariably stressful. Constant handling is a stressor that evokes the secretion of various hormones that, among other things, inhibit the body’s immune system. The result can be a dramatically shortened lifespan.

*sigh...

He's ready for his close-up, Mr. Demille

Until my wife and I watched Sunset Boulevard last week, I had no idea how creepy the original context of that famous line is. Anyway, a better camera came to visit, and here's a few snaps of the little gaffer.