Forest, our Chameleon

One of the men that works with our dad is a friend of ours.  He knows how much we like pets.  So one day, he found a small chameleon near his field.  Gumuz don't really like chameleons and some of them think they are dangerous.  But, he walked for a whole hour from his field with this chameleon on a stick.   Forest was a very special chameleon.  Usually when we have a chameleon for a pet, we only keep it for a day because it turns grey which means it is unhappy.  Other chameleons have been afraid of us (probably because they are older and wiser).  But Forest was special.  He liked spending time with us. 

Nadia:  I didn't get to hold him a lot.  He was really green.

 Joel:  Forest sometimes turned the color of his environment (though not completely).  He was usually green.  He liked climbing up on top of my head.

 Ariana:  He was such a nice chameleon.  His claws felt like our budgie claws.  

Kalia:  I loved it when he ate a praying mantis.  This was his favorite food and there were plenty of mantises in our back porch.  We loved watching his LONG tongue grab the mantis from a foot away!  He became so tame that he did this while sitting on my hand.

But we decided to let him go back into the wild because we were going on a long driving trip to a large city that didn't have much green space.  We loved having Forest for a whole week and hope we find another one like him.

 This is a much older and wiser chameleon that our dad found the next day but we didn't keep him for more than an hour.  He was kind of mean and hissed at us.

 So we just kept him on a stick and then let him go.