I was always into lizards- as a preschooler I lived in California and was already catching my first sceloporus off of the fence and woodpile in the back yard.
In the early 70s for Christmas someone gave us kids the "wildlife encyclopedia" set (20 something volumes- excellent for the time with color photos and lengthy entries). I didn't do much with them for several years, and then I began noticing the beautiful lizard photos in the volumes, and started reading about those lizards. Particularly I remember the green tree monitor photo and one of a big iguana and another of a chamaeleo hoehneli. I lived in a smallish town and there were only a couple of small pet shops for miles around and in those shops there were only fish. So I have no idea why, but I started thinking about those lizards in the encyclopedia's as "pets" and just accepted the idea that I could and would keep them someday. I daydreamed of having a huge iguana (6' sounded really big in those days! I envisioned something more alligator sized on a leash walking down the street with me!).
In the 6th grade I made a poster in art class out of cut-out bits of paper. It featured a jackson's chameleon and the words "chameleon's for sale". But there were still no lizards in our pet shops.
Later about that same age, I met a girl who said she had a chameleon at home. It lived in a "TV top" terrarium (these were clear plastic tiny terraria molded to look like television sets- they were probably 1 quart volume only! People kept anoles and hermit crabs in them in those days I guess) and she had it for several years and didn't want it any more. She offered it to me, and I accepted, sight unseen. My father picked it up and brought it home in a gallon pickle jar. I looked at it with eager anticipation- no turret eyes, no "pincer hands" no long tongue. But it did change color. I quickly looked into my "wildlife encyclopedia" chameleon entry to compare with the photos of dilepis and the other chameleons there, back and forth I looked from lizard to photos. My father (trained scientist and veterinarian) spent the next couple of days trying to convince me that the green anole in the pickle jar was the same as the green colored dilepis in the encyclopedia!
Poor anole didn't last long. But that was the last lizard that I kept that didn't have proper care.
Eventually I finally got my first iguana when our family visited St. Louis and as a 12 year old or thereabouts I called all the pet shops in the phone book until I found one with iguanas. When we visited to get the iguana, I don't remember seeing any chameleons (too much in love with the baby iguanas on a very beautifully made display about 2x2x3' on the counter). But I do remember the tokay geckos I saw that day which looked huge to me, and they had sungazers there too! I think for $35. Can you imagine that today? Interestingly, the price of iguanas then is about what it is now for babies- $20 in the shop.
I began accumulating a few books about lizards, and reading what I could find at the library and learned that chameleons were impossible to keep in captivity for very long. And I put the idea on the shelf until my early 20s.
It was about that time that lizard keeping exploded in popularity. You guys who are younger have no idea what you missed! It was an exciting time for someone like me. I went from having almost no decent literature and using sunshine and bird vitamins to reptile specific products like lighting, supplements, and even veterinary medicine. (My first iguana had an unfortunate accident when I was a kid and got a broken leg as a result- he needed surgery. The college of veterinary medicine had never had a lizard patient, had never done surgery on a lizard (we had an excellent surgeon for him though- friend of the family). They had to figure out how to do the anesthesia too- they tried gassing him in an aquarium at first but he held his breath for 30 or 40 minutes so they had to give up and work out something that could be given in his blood!) Now even veterinary medicine was getting in on the act, and dosages for worming and so forth were worked out for chameleons.
So fast forward to my early 20s- about this time that I discovered the British Herpetological Society's journal in our local university library. There I read nearly every volume going back decades and with great excitement I read about Robert Bustard's success keeping and breeding a variety of chameleons, and how he housed and fed those chameleons and how he incubated the eggs. He was THE pioneer of chameleon husbandry, learning so he could study their social behavior. I was in heaven with this information. Not long after, the old AVS black and white care booklets were available in a pet shop in the mall of a city about 30 minutes from home and I came across them one day- De Vosjoli's chameleons vol 1 and 2. Now I was really set, and then not long thereafter I came across reptile and amphibian magazine and began buying those(that was a great publication! Much better than today's reptiles). In the back of that magazine in the classifieds- I found someone who bred veiled chameleons, and I ordered my first pair. It was about $500 for the pair if I remember right, and the breeder would only send them delta airlines, so I had to drive 40 minutes to the airport to pick them up. They were only about 3 inches long! I couldn't believe I had thrown down so much money on such tiny creatures! I held my breath for their survival, but they grew super fast, and that is how I got my first chameleons and my first chameleon breeding experience. Must have been 1991.
