Leaf Chameleons....or miniature Houdinis??
Okay, so, my leaf chameleon tank that Jen and I built ages ago was starting to look kind of crummy. Like, half the plants were dead because somehow I can keep animals alive just fine but plants are beyond me, and all in all it just looked kind of...bad. And empty of plants. Also, a shelf opened up that is *not* on the windowsill because all of the rats (down to 3, sadly) are in one cage now. So I decided to move the chameleons to the other tank for a few minutes, move their tank, remodel it, and put it on the not-windowsill shelf. Also I got them a new light fixture! Because I suspect part of the plant problem is that 18" of fluorescent light across a 30" tank is just not enough. So now there are 24" of light!! Hopefully that will be enough. The other part of my solution was to plant things that are indestructible/I've been able to keep alive in the past, aka pothos, creeping fig from the dart frogs' tank, and a baby off of that airplane/spider/whatever plant that I've had for a bajillion years and is impossible to kill.
So I went to take the chameleons out, as stage one. I only spotted two right off the bat, but I hadn't looked that hard and figured the other one was there somewhere, I'd find him as I took out all the dead plants/branches during stage 2. Stage 2 progressed. No chameleon. I started to get worried. I searched the tank, then searched it again. I was 99.9999% sure he hadn't been on any of the branches/plants I'd pulled out, since I'd been actively checking them for him. Looked in the trash can just in case he *was* on one of the thrown-away dead plants. Called Mom in. Mom looked for him. I looked some more. We looked *everywhere*. He's nowhere to be found. I concluded that either a) he used some stealth ninja chameleon skills to sneak away while I wasn't looking (c'mon, guys, you know how slow those things are, this is *highly* unlikely) b) he was on one of the branches I took out after all and is crawling around invisibly on the carpet (yes, we looked all over the floor) or c) he has some insanely secure hidey-hole in the background of the tank (most likely option since there are a lot of holes in the tank background and there have been 2 and 3 day periods in the past where I only found 2 out of 3 chameleons no matter how hard I looked). So, anyway, I figure I'll just wait a few days and he will probably turn up in the tank, hopefully, or somewhere else (and hopefully won't get stepped on if he is on the floor. I'm going to be walking *ve-ry* carefully in the back room).
So, yeah. Chameleons? Magic invisibility powers, totally.
I would post pictures of the tank but I am too lazy to go get the camera. It's green and pretty, trust me.
So I went to take the chameleons out, as stage one. I only spotted two right off the bat, but I hadn't looked that hard and figured the other one was there somewhere, I'd find him as I took out all the dead plants/branches during stage 2. Stage 2 progressed. No chameleon. I started to get worried. I searched the tank, then searched it again. I was 99.9999% sure he hadn't been on any of the branches/plants I'd pulled out, since I'd been actively checking them for him. Looked in the trash can just in case he *was* on one of the thrown-away dead plants. Called Mom in. Mom looked for him. I looked some more. We looked *everywhere*. He's nowhere to be found. I concluded that either a) he used some stealth ninja chameleon skills to sneak away while I wasn't looking (c'mon, guys, you know how slow those things are, this is *highly* unlikely) b) he was on one of the branches I took out after all and is crawling around invisibly on the carpet (yes, we looked all over the floor) or c) he has some insanely secure hidey-hole in the background of the tank (most likely option since there are a lot of holes in the tank background and there have been 2 and 3 day periods in the past where I only found 2 out of 3 chameleons no matter how hard I looked). So, anyway, I figure I'll just wait a few days and he will probably turn up in the tank, hopefully, or somewhere else (and hopefully won't get stepped on if he is on the floor. I'm going to be walking *ve-ry* carefully in the back room).
So, yeah. Chameleons? Magic invisibility powers, totally.
I would post pictures of the tank but I am too lazy to go get the camera. It's green and pretty, trust me.