The Colour Changer . . . Endangered species???

I nearly stepped on this little guy who had taken on the colour of the gravel pathway I was following

When first I picked him up he tried frantically to get away, but within a few minutes he calmed down but kept walking away from my face towards the shrubs alongside

When we were kids we would often find chameleons, really big ones, some more than a foot long and make temporary pets of them as they tamed readily

Feeding was no problem. We would get a piece of meat from mom, tie it onto a branch and leave it in the cage
Hanging in the sun it would soon start getting smelly and attract flies. All the chameleon did was sit on a nearby branch and pick em off with his long curled up tongue!

We never kept them longer than a week or two, before releasing them, as we were afraid that they might become too attached to their own private gourmet restaurant and not hunt naturally

In this blog I tried a number of different backgrounds in an effort to get this little guy to colour his body to match his surroundings, but without success. Then I remembered that only the older ones would change colour almost instantly and had almost limitless camouflage available

There was In my youth a well known old wives tale that warned never to put a chameleon on a red surface as it would explode in an attempt to copy the colour!

We never put that legend to the test!!

I wonder if the small ones, like all babies need time to learn how to use their abilities?

The sad part to this story is that as children we played with these fascinating creatures often, finding them in the garden throughout the year with no difficulty

This is only the second chameleon I have seen in the last ten years!