FINALLY got my very first cham!!!

[Jupiter]

Chamfan: There are plenty of members who are in Canada, so it’s doable. The decision is going to be much more about whether you are ready to deal with all the care requirements, rather then if the cham can deal with the weather. This is a good link to help get you started on deciding if one is right for you.

https://www.chameleonforums.com/care/chameleons/

Fonz: Thanks! Yeah the colors have been flooding in since the shed, and he is definitely starting to get bolder! Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing haha. How is Renly doing?


Didn’t do a whole lot of picture taking today, but I did get some. He had about ten or so grubs in the morning, and probably five more in the evening. After breakfast I took him outside, and it was pretty warm so I decided to spray him down with the garden sprayer I use on my boa so he wouldn’t get too dry. He L O V E D it. Whenever I’ve put him in the shower he has seemed to tolerate it. I don’t know if it having the sun on him so he didn’t get too chilly or if it was the size of the drops or what, be he would position himself to get maximum exposure as I moved around the plant, and he got his eyes good and flushed. Definitely glad it’s warm enough to do that now, that’s going to be a regular thing from now on.

Some macros





Getting that spray







Instead of a pot with gold and a leprechaun, it’s got a plant and a cham.



And some standard chillin. I think this is actually when he was going down to his cup for his later meal.



That’s all I got for now, I hope you have a happy holiday! (Assuming you’re an American. If not, have a happy regular Monday anyway!)

 

[Jupiter]

Hey CF, I’ve been slacking on updates recently; I’ve had a lot on my plate and not much time to spend on the forums, and what I do have I’ve been squandering arguing about selective breeding. I do have some pics though. Nothing too terribly exciting since the last update, but today is the one month anniversary of Aesop’s arrival, so I’m going to have to think of something special.

Anyway, starting right off, showing this very striking pattern I don’t see much, and don’t seem to be able to photograph well. His white line (is there a technical term for that?) just pops when he’s like this.



Meditating





What could this be…



Why, it’s a chameleon! Who would have guessed?



Chillin. (basking, actually)





Hmmm, what’s down here?



Pretending to be a duck?







Super nice light on this one, not sure what it is but I really like it.



He’s starting to occasionally show white stripes on his throat, which is fine with me; his great grand daddy is Candycane, and I would love to see some of those genes show themselves.



Gazing out at the world, thinking chameleon thoughts with his chameleon brain.



His relatively ugly directly-in-the-sun colors. Makes him look kind of like the Cheshire cat.

 

[Jupiter]

Once more he climbed off the plant to venture where no cham had gone before! Or I guess where he had been, once before. Whatever.



That’s one small step for a cham, one giant leap for cham-kind



Go Aesop go!



More Harvey Dent coloration.





Fired up good and bright at one point; the background of his cheeks were pretty red.



Preparing to venture off the map…



Rompin!



…



He worked his way over to the apple tree again, and this time I let him do a little climbing. (ok so maybe he did go where no cham has gone before. Bite me.)







My lil guy is growing so fast! I’ll have to take some actual anniversary pics, but if you go back and compare this to the pic of him on my hand at the top of page three, he’s got to be at least 50% bigger! And 200% more colorful!





That’s all I got for now, I’ll try and update later tonight. Peace!

 

[Jupiter]

Hey everybody. I haven’t been feeling well lately and haven’t been able to update. Aesop is chugging right along, he hasn’t really wanted to leave the cage these last few days and hasn’t had a chance to go romping, but he’s started to eat crickets out of my fingers, so I’m not taking it personally . Actually it was pretty funny, just today the cricket escaped just as he fired and he caught my finger!! He pulled it back to his mouth and gnawed on it for a few seconds until the other shoe dropped and he let go. I’m glad he’s not bigger, it didn’t really hurt but it wasn’t pleasant, that’s for sure. My finger felt sticky for like an hour afterwards . Anyway, on with the pics!



Sometimes his light/dark bars invert and his stripes get stripes. It’s really weird; I wish there was more consistency to it so I would know why. I’ve seen it a few times, but these are the only pics I’ve managed to get that are even close to being presentable.









You can really see his pale patch at the base of his tail. I’m actually getting a little bit worried about it, so I’m definitely keeping my eye on it. There is going to be a checkup in his near future anyway, so I’ll ask about it then.



Just being a cute little basker



Munchin. The color on his limbs is starting to catch up with the rest of his body. His tail is still behind the times though.

 

[Jupiter]

Doing the wave!!







I just love his throat, it looks like lava or something



….HI











That’s all I got for now, I think I’m on the rebound, so hopefully I can start taking more pics. I’m getting some BB flies soon, so that should make for some entertaining images. Thanks for looking!

 

[Jupiter]

WHATS UP CHAM FORUMS YOU READY TO ROCK?!?! Well then I can’t help you, this is just a pokey little thread about my cham. Here he is swallowing. (If you want to rock I recommend Led Zeppelin IV)





Exciting stuff! Bet you’ve never seen pics like that in this thread before! Today was a pretty good day, he was willing to come out of his cage, so I hand fed him some crickets until he was full, then he started exploring. Here’s where he ended up.



I had to kind of tip my head and gently dump him onto his palm so I could take him outside. He just can’t resist showing off his sexy throat.



I was at soopies the other day to get water for his mister and they had these big pothos towers that were clearly designed with chams specifically in mind, for twenty bucks, so I went ahead and got one, and I think he likes it much more then his palm. Its exactly four feet high, so he can feel a little more secure outside while it’s a freerange, and then it will make a nice addition when I upgrade to his big boy cage. The palm will probably have to be retired, it’s a nice jungle gym and it looks nice, but it’s kind of flimsy.



You can see the height difference between the palm and the pothos is pretty dramatic.



Its also a much better water collector, in true pothos fashion. When I sprayed him down he took a nice long drink from the bottom of one of the leaves.



Behold! Aesop, king of the pothos!





Aaaand even closer. I just love that drop of water in the middle.







I wish I had a prehensile tail…





And later on in the evening. I wish I had more colorful pics of him, but he gets super dark outside, and none of the pics from this morning made it past my quality control when I was editing.



That’s all for today, you and your chams have a good night, and as always, thanks for looking!

 

[ReptiGeek]

He is really showing lovely colours in your past few uploads. You must be very proud!
Question for you. Did you make that pothos-bamboo tree?

 

[Thegreatfonz]

Wow Aesop's looking great! His blue bars are starting to come through nicely! And WOW I want that pothos!! I'd buy atleast two of those!

 

[tdismang]

He's so cute! Congrats! He's so lucky to be in your care!

 

[tdismang]

lmao! i just saw the "doing the wave" picture. hilarious!
your captions are silly!

 

[Jupiter]

Thanks I try haha reptigeek, no I wish. I got it at king soopers. And yeah fonz I think I'm going to go get another one when I get back from running errands. Even if it wasn't so perfect for chams, 20 bucks for that much pothos is an awesome deal. Thanks for your kind words everyone, ill pass them along to Aesop, but I think he will probably just look at me with goggly eyed skepticism haha

 

[Jupiter]

Hello everybody! Exciting things should be happening soon; I ended up getting three more of those pothos towers and am going to rearrange my room and set up a freerange over the next day or two. It should be pretty cool.







I think this sums up his personality more then any other picture I’ve taken so far.





Got some crazy eyeball action going on in this one.





I had SO much trouble deciding between the next two when I was editing. The first one has more personality but the second is in much better focus. I ended up just deciding to show both, and let you decide which you prefer.





My little dinosaur…







One day I’ll get a good one, one day…

 

[Jupiter]

The color and exposure on this one came out really nice; probably the best on a picture of him so far.



It’s very subtle, but he’s starting to show some electric blue in with the red on his throat! Can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am about that!





Here he is resting, building up his strength to use his magic powers…



Aesop: The Amazing Levitating Chameleon!!!!!



Oh wait that pic was sideways…



Kickin it, as only a chameleon can.



Quite the elegant curve









That’s all I got for now, stay tuned – the freerange cometh!!

 

[jannb]

Your little man is growing and looking so handsome. I can't wait to see his free range.

 

[Jupiter]

Thank you I am as well haha its going to be interesting

 

[Jupiter]

Helloo everybody! Setting up that freerange took longer then expected, before I could set it up I had to rearrange my room, and before I could rearrange my room I had to clean it, and THAT is no small task. Its done now though, so we’ll get to that in a bit. First though…

Is it just me, or are chameleons…really weird?



Refusing to get off his ride to the outdoor plant



I gently slid the leaf under him and he eventually got the picture







Balancing act



Artsy fartsy



Starting to see more of that blue in his throat!!



This is a nice little trilogy







Yet another failed feeding pic…



Starting to get pretty dang colorful…I especially like the ring of stripes that’s coming in around his eye.



The top of his noggin



The other day I had my bamboo right in front of his cage while I was moving things around, and he ventured out on to it.

 

[Jupiter]

He then stayed there until bedtime! This is the first time I’ve been able to get a good look at him when he’s sleeping, and because he was right out in the open I got a REALLY good look. I took some pictures while there was still the tail end of sunlight, but it was still dark enough that I had to use shutter speeds well into the “tripod or die” range of slowness, and have a tripod I do not, so you’ll have to bear with me here, image quality is about to take a pretty sharp dip. He’s got some crazy patterns going on, that’s for sure!



You can see that Candycane heritage coming out around his eye again…



His bars seem to be developing bars of their own…



I think he liked sleeping outside his cage, because he was super colorful the next day





Here he is preparing to take an inquisitive lick…



…and here he is satisfied with what he tasted. Aw yeah.





A lot of the times when he catches a bug he wont chew it up right away, but will just sit there with it sticking out of his mouth like a cigar for a few seconds before going ahead and mashing it up. It’s pretty funny.



Alrighty, now comes the moment you have all been salivating over (or that at least some of you are mildly interested in, hopefully) le freerange!



I’ve got manila rope connecting the plants (except the one on the floor, it just drapes over that one so I can still take it outside) and this piece of netting I had left over from an art project hanging down for even more jungle gym. I’m sure he’ll have hours of fun clambering around while I search for him with steadily rising panic! I move the bamboo around to control his access to it, but I think I may have to supplement that with a rope, we’ll see.





He’s been on it for about an hour and only just now left the bamboo (and I mean now as I’m writing this, not now when the picture was taken), so he definitely has a lot of exploration ahead of him!



Puffed, puffed on the range…



That’s all for now, any comments or constructive criticism on the freerange would be greatly appreciated Thanks for looking!

 

[djfishygillz]

Very cool free range, just know he WILL EXPLORE, he will LEAVE the FREE RANGE A LOT! Especially if he has easy access. So make sure your house is safe and secure.

 

[Jupiter]

Thanks for the advice, I don't plan on letting him roam without supervision, although he fell asleep on it and will probably wake up before me so that will be interesting. I think things are good though, he is still right by his cage so I'll put some grubs in his cup for him to see. Its a big area, but it has pretty well defined boundaries and I keep my door closed almost all the time, so I think its about as good as I can make it. It's definitely going to be a learning experience though, I'm still trying to figure out if there is a schedule I can set up where he has range time and cage time, and poops in the cage haha

 

[djfishygillz]

Thanks for the advice, I don't plan on letting him roam without supervision, although he fell asleep on it and will probably wake up before me so that will be interesting. I think things are good though, he is still right by his cage so I'll put some grubs in his cup for him to see. Its a big area, but it has pretty well defined boundaries and I keep my door closed almost all the time, so I think its about as good as I can make it. It's definitely going to be a learning experience though, I'm still trying to figure out if there is a schedule I can set up where he has range time and cage time, and poops in the cage haha

One other word of advise, chameleons that are always caged are more docile and calm in their cages. But once they are free ranged they can start to nose-rub on their because they will become used to not having barriers to where they would prefer to travel. So watch for the nose-rub and the seemingly restless attempts to escape their cage once they have to go back into it. If he is attempting to always get out you may have to make the decision to ALWAYS free range which is a very large commitment.

Also I forgot to say, it looks very cool! I love the dense vegetation.