![Picture](/uploads/2/4/9/4/24949670/1385208994.jpg)
Firstly I must apologise for the truly awful picture, this was as close as I could get and the chameleon was very small.
Mr B had told me there were chameleons here, I thought he was pulling my gullible English leg. 'A Unicorn!? Where?' He said they hung out up plant stalks behind my flat. So, as looking at nature requires one to actually look, I would spend a little time each day gazing idly into the brush. Ruskin said that most of what goes on around us is 'not merely unnoticed, but in the full, clear sense of the word, unseen'. So I try, when I can, to look.
Sure enough, Mr B entirely vindicated, yesterday there was a chameleon sitting up a stalk, legs gripping it with its pincer-like toes, its prehensile tail wrapped around. I am quite beside myself with excitement, my first wild chameleon. They do have five toes, they are grouped together as a two and a three, on each foot.
It spent the rest of the day up there, I spent the rest of the day watching it, I moved considerably more than it did. As
chameleons are lizards, and thus ectothermic, I expected it to come down in the evening when the sun went down. It didn't, it stayed there all night and was still in the same spot this morning, it then left at some point during the day when I'd given up monitoring an immobile reptile.
Did it have to reheat today to gather enough energy to move? Why didn't it go home last night & then come back? Are they partially nocturnal? Do larger reptiles store inner heat? I don't know. I need to learn more about the ecology of Gozo.
Mr B had told me there were chameleons here, I thought he was pulling my gullible English leg. 'A Unicorn!? Where?' He said they hung out up plant stalks behind my flat. So, as looking at nature requires one to actually look, I would spend a little time each day gazing idly into the brush. Ruskin said that most of what goes on around us is 'not merely unnoticed, but in the full, clear sense of the word, unseen'. So I try, when I can, to look.
Sure enough, Mr B entirely vindicated, yesterday there was a chameleon sitting up a stalk, legs gripping it with its pincer-like toes, its prehensile tail wrapped around. I am quite beside myself with excitement, my first wild chameleon. They do have five toes, they are grouped together as a two and a three, on each foot.
It spent the rest of the day up there, I spent the rest of the day watching it, I moved considerably more than it did. As
chameleons are lizards, and thus ectothermic, I expected it to come down in the evening when the sun went down. It didn't, it stayed there all night and was still in the same spot this morning, it then left at some point during the day when I'd given up monitoring an immobile reptile.
Did it have to reheat today to gather enough energy to move? Why didn't it go home last night & then come back? Are they partially nocturnal? Do larger reptiles store inner heat? I don't know. I need to learn more about the ecology of Gozo.