Selected Snpd - Day 5

20100702 Fri

Take that, chameleon. Not so hidden now, are ya?

A note to you northerners who like to call our little Florida lizards "chameleons": this animal is not a chameleon. Neither is she a gecko. You certainly don't want to call her a gila monster; those guys are tough.

This little gal (or guy) is a brown anoles.


What children in Florida know about the brown anoles:

They change their shades of brown according to their backdrop, such as the brown cardboard box where you feed yours or the empty brown paint can where you let it run like a gerbil.

They cannot run in a paint can like a gerbil in a wheel. They are much too small to make the can roll, and they have small reptile legs and small reptile metabolism. They can, however, run in a toilet paper roll; but before getting much exercise at all, they usually walk out the end you didn't seal.

They get dizzy if you spin their paint cans for them, walking very low to the ground and a little bit off kilter long enough for you to run inside for a toilet paper roll.

They really really like when you catch them and put them in a shoebox habitat. They're especially appreciative of the "pond" in the corner, the rocky "coastline," the "meadow" of St. Augustine grass, and the toilet paper roll. It's only your dad who says they don't like living in there. If they didn't like it in there, then why else would they turn the color of your shoebox?

The things they eat, you don't want to touch. It is best you let them out to do their own hunting.

Once you let yours out for hunting, you will not see it again for a good long while-- might as well a find another one.

They have no inhibitions about where they mate. (Psst, anole. Your dewlap is showing.)

Two fighting anoles is really a silly thing: after muzzling each other for a few seconds, they usually just walk away.

It’s true about separating its ever-wiggling tail from its body in order to throw off predators, but how that could possibly be worth it is a total mystery.

You had to have put in a tremendous effort to annoy one seriously enough for it to bite you. This is when you hold it near your ear and let it clamp down like a clip-on earring. It’s not like they have teeth.

This is all true. If as a kid you spent a single Florida summer playing outside, if any of your friends had a pool, if someone ever left your screen door open for a minute too long while a lizard ran inside, or if you have woken up to see a male lizard on the wall doing one of those pushup sets they do, then you already knew these things.