Easter Hyena And Now The Passover Chameleon?

So it’s Saturday afternoon when from my home office I hear the back door slam and a long ‘hey daaaaaadddddddddyyyyyyyyyy!’ ring through the house. Then suddenly Max bursts into the office carrying a plastic Tupperware thingy with the biggest Chameleon lizard in it I have ever seen. ‘Look at this, dad.’ He says ‘I found him on our gate! Here hold this while I help Evans (our gardener) find things for it to eat.’

Cool! I’m thinking as I look at this thing with its two eyes moving around in two different directions at the same time. I suppose it was trying to think of how it could turn it’s self into the translucent color of the Tupperware thingy so it could hide. I was wondering where that old aquarium was that I hadn’t seen since we moved.

Max and I found a temporary home for it in a plastic basket with a top on it while we tried to find that aquarium. No luck as we remembered it was haircut day and we were off. No sooner than we were back and we went to check on our lizard friend then he had escaped. Damn, he was strong! Opened the lid by himself!??? We looked around the kitchen where the basket stayed, no luck. Max went outside to ask the guard if he had seen it and sure enough he had (what?)! He saw him dash up a tree in the front yard too. Hmmm, let’s think about this one Sherlock: Herculean Chameleon lifts plastic lid off of basket, jumps off table, opens steel security back kitchen door, dashes out of house and avoids detection by dogs then runs up a tree. Hmmmm. I’m sure we’ll find it in somewhere in the house by morning.

I thought it would actually be cool having a pet Chameleon around but how exactly DO you take care of a Chameleon anyway? Well, I whipped out my trusty internet enabled phone to do a little Google search: “how to care for Chameleon” and found this Chameleon Manual site. One sentence in particular stands out for me which went something like “if you want an easy pet to take care of this is not the pet for you”. PLEASE, let’s hope it actually DID open that back door and flee!!

Let’s review the last two years of pet keeping in our house: Two dogs (check) who takes care of these guys? ME. One cat, who takes care of her? ME. Nine puppies (because we thought it would be fun for the kids, not), who took care of them? ME, well, me and the two gardeners and Gladys (it takes a village you know) so what was I thinking!!!! There is no way we are keeping this lizard!

I didn’t have to say any thing to Max yet, no need to as there was no lizard, nice. But that all changed as one very excited 5 year old came running into the bedroom the next morning proclaiming the lizard had been found-in the kitchen. Oh man, I had to quickly nip this in the bud though before the excitement was no longer containable. Blurry-eyed from lack of coffee I finally convinced Max that living in the wild would be the best thing for it. We all set out to the yard with Chameleon in a Tupperware thingy, tied the dogs so they wouldn’t eat it…….yet, and set it out on a tree [see photo]. We said our goodbyes and walked away. I looked out the window 10 minutes later and it had disappeared.

Turns out there were several of these big-ass Chameleons in our yard. The guard actually did see one go up a tree. Max and I found another one dead in the yard a little later that day ( I am hoping it wasn’t the same one we set out on the tree and the dogs got to it, sigh, suppose it’s possible, I would never tell Max though). We also noticed there were a lot of grasshoppers in the yard too, favorite dinning for Chameleons.


Last year for Passover we had 40 guests for a seder. No way we can get that many in this house. We had two families over and had a great time. Here is Max helping to make Maztah, a new family tradition for us after last year.
















Of course Esther helped too!