According to Old World folklore,
anyone who breaks the path of a
chameleon will suffer a lifetime of
bad luck. In Madagascar, a woman
steps on and fractures the jaw of a
Parsons chameleon. She later gives
birth to a deformed baby. The same
lizard is captured and shipped to a
Denver pet shop, owned by lovers
KENT WESCHESTER (POV) and
PAUL SHERIDAN, who begin to
mirror health and mental problems
of the chameleon, somewhat like
the Portrait of Dorian Gray, except
neither lizard nor man are spared
the downward spiral.
anyone who breaks the path of a
chameleon will suffer a lifetime of
bad luck. In Madagascar, a woman
steps on and fractures the jaw of a
Parsons chameleon. She later gives
birth to a deformed baby. The same
lizard is captured and shipped to a
Denver pet shop, owned by lovers
KENT WESCHESTER (POV) and
PAUL SHERIDAN, who begin to
mirror health and mental problems
of the chameleon, somewhat like
the Portrait of Dorian Gray, except
neither lizard nor man are spared
the downward spiral.
| Photo of author with male Parsons Chameleon |
Kent stresses himself, his lover, and his business by allowing a gambling habit to grow out of
hand. Paul suffers mental problems and spends money quicker than Kent can make it. Fire
ants, the IRS, the health department, and a radio talk show host wreak havoc with the store.
One day, Kent discovers a flaw in the way his bank processes ATM deposits. Through a
scheme involving his own checks and an ATM card, he pilfers $250,000 from his bank, a
thousand dollars at a time, over a period of seven months.
The Madagascar chameleon lays eggs, but turns out to be hermaphroditic. This starts a parade
of voyeurs, from worshiping transsexuals to bumbling wildlife agents.
As illness plagues Kent and Paul, they ponder a difficult question: Did the lizard or rotten luck
cause their woes? Will love help them overcome the odds?
Chapter One A Folktale's Basis in Fact
Masoala Peninsula, Madagascar
Mesenda stops dead in her tracks the second she feels a soft, undulating warmth under her left
foot. Peering down, she finds her bare toes curled over the twisted, broken jaw of a gentle
Madagascar rain forest chameleon. She staggers backward, skin sweltering. Five months
pregnant and two months bloated, her breath quickens as she realizes her baby’s entire future
hangs on a precipice.
The fateful day is the fourteenth of January in the year nineteen hundred ninety-six. The young
Malagasy native had just begun the long walk back to her village. Normally, she was more
careful, but this time she failed to heed her step, hot and tired from picking berries all day.
Mesenda’s ear-piercing wail echoes through the rainforest as she drops her basket and flees,
both hands cupping her belly to keep it from bouncing up and down like a jellyfish. She weeps
ever more loudly during the mile-long journey to her village. When she arrives, her voice is
gone, vocal chords ravaged from the intensity of her cries. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” she tells
herself. “Words are useless for one about to become an outcast.”
At the end of May, when the baby arrives, difficult and painful as the birth is, Mesenda remains
calm. The terror has run its course. She knows what to expect and is resigned to it.
The senior Malagasy wives had warned her about this taboo, this “fady.” “Do not cross the
path of ‘Barama,’ lizard with eyes in back of head. Don’t harm one scale on this creature, for if
you do, a lifetime of tears will follow.” But during the four months waiting to deliver the child,
she could not bring herself to tell the elders or her mate of the bad luck which had befallen her.
During the birthing, the midwives’ eyes fall upon the horribly misshapen jaw of the baby. Their
screams carry deep into the forest, because, although the baby’s deformity is tragic, it is also a
foreshadowing of misery yet to come. Now a reign of misogyny, famine, disease, and despair is
certain to sweep over the entire village.
* * * *
Two months later, on the outskirts of Manakara, Madagascar, a reptile collector meets with a
potential customer. The trapper appears pleased with the five days of hard work he’s put in
throughout the Masoala Peninsula. Crate after crate, filled with various species of lizards and
amphibians, lines the bed of his truck like a bizarre three-story prison for reptiles.
An American buyer eyes the luminous colors, focusing on the green shades inside the crate
filled with chamaeleo parsonii parsonii, the giant Parsons chameleon worth a small fortune to
the pet trade in the United States. He watches as each orange, bulbous eye rotates
independent of the other. For the first time, the man understands why the Malagasy claim the
lizards have eyes in the back of their heads. He looks them over for signs of ill health, but there
are so many crowded together, he fails to notice any that might have a crooked jaw.
After he pays the hunter with six American hundred-dollar bills, the buyer sifts through the
crates. He chooses the twelve collections he’s due from a wide assortment of chameleons, day
geckoes, tree frogs, skinks, turtles, and salamanders—subspecies of creatures so rare they
exist nowhere else on earth. Though the herpatiles seem to be trembling, unfamiliar with the
limits of confinement, their skin pigments glisten in the afternoon sun like shimmering rubies,
glistening emeralds, and translucent watercolor diamonds, a veritable living rainbow.
A plane whisks them from the Manakara airport to a wholesale distributor in Miami Beach.
* * * *
A driver for The Florida Reptile House rescues the boxes from twelve hours in a dark, hot
corner of the airport warehouse on July twenty-first and takes them to the wholesaler’s
facilities. Separating the living from the dead, the young man dumps those still moving into
holding cages sans food and water, where they will stay for another twelve hours, until the
morning shift arrives. Hungry and dehydrated, the beautiful creatures cling side by side to the
welded wire of their homemade cages, their prognosis more negative with each passing
hour.
The very next day, the imported critters trickle into pet shops across America, most arriving on
their sides, inanimate or moribund. The few still capable of remaining upright also lie still,
immobilized by the confines of cloth shipping bags.
* * * *
Denver, Colorado; United States of America
On July twenty-second, the first of the bounty still living begins to trickle into pet shops across
America. Inside Colorado Ranch and Pet Supply, owner Kent Weschester opens a box fresh
from Denver International Airport.
He pulls at an ungiving flap of cardboard on the lid, sighs, and turns to his partner of fourteen
years. “Paul, would you hand me your knife? Tape won’t tear. Tell me, did they have ’em
unloaded from the plane and ready?”
“Naw!” Paul Sheridan scowls, his thirty-seven year-old Cherokee skin glowing under the
store’s fluorescent light. He slides behind and wraps his arms around Kent’s chest, while
resting his chin on Kent’s shoulder. “Those assholes left our boxes on the dock in the hot sun,
as usual. If anything’s wrong with the Parsons, I’ll be sick!”
Kent pulls loose. “Not now, baby! It feels good, but we gotta give these critters some TLC.” He
pecks Paul on the cheek and removes bags from the box marked "G Day Gecko, W Box
Turtle," and "RE tree frog," before finding one labeled "P Chameleon." He lifts the cotton sack
and unties the string. Feeling a smile growing on his forty-nine year-old face, he pulls the big
beautiful creature from the bag. It crawls up an arm to his shoulder, barely touching Kent’s
blond hair.
“Wow!” Paul steps back. “He’s beautiful! And huge!” The eyes are bright and clear, rotating a
full three hundred sixty degrees, like periscopes checking out unfamiliar, perhaps dangerous,
territory. A cool turquoise luminescence washes over the chameleon’s entire head and
continues on to the back and stomach, where it abruptly changes to a lustrous emerald, and in
a resplendent finale, transforms into a vivid jade on the prehensile tail.
Kent knows, in all truth, it’s a real dinosaur. However, unlike the gargantuan ones, it’s
somehow a survivor of the earth’s unholy carnage through the last sixty-five million years. Yet,
the true chameleon is fragile when forcibly confined, not unlike its human captors.
Placing his hand under the twenty-three inch slow-moving chameleon, Kent lifts it up for a
better look. “Damn! Look at the jaw! It’s crooked! How could they send me one so messed up?
Could be a sign of an infection . . . or a calcium deficiency.”
Kent picks up the phone to call The Florida Reptile House. An unfamiliar voice answers.
“Yes?”
“Is this the lizard wholesaler?” Kent asks.
“Not any more. This is the Internal Revenue Service. We’re bolting the doors to lock down
seized property. This facility is now owned by the United States government.”
Kent quickly hangs up the phone. “We’re screwed—by their bad luck. IRS just closed ’em
down.”
“What happened?”
“Didn’t ask. I have no desire to cozy-up to the IRS. It’s obvious anyway. Didn’t pay their taxes.”
“Shit!” Paul says. “That’s the third supplier gone under this year. It’s hard being in the pet
business—wholesale or retail. How many retailers gone down this year, anyway?”
“Four between here and Boulder, I think. I guess we’re fortunate to have built the business
back up from the pitts.” Kent smiles at Paul and plants a kiss on his lips. He has such beautiful
blue eyes and smooth, warm lips! I’m a lucky man. “So glad I found you in Oklahoma when I
was drying out from my coke habit, man. Hadn’t been for you, I woulda lost everything.”
Paul wraps his arms around Kent and nuzzles his neck. “Just think. If you hadn’t pulled me
away from that stock boy job at Wal-Mart, I might still be driving a Ford Escort! Ha! Remember
that piece of shit? Started falling apart from the day I bought it.”
“Yeah, the chrome-covered plastic parts’re what got me. Think that’s when I realized the quality
in America had begun to take a damned nose dive.”
“Speaking of quality, I don’t know why a supplier would send out a chameleon looking like this
one. Don’t they have any self-respect? Who knows, maybe they knew they were about to go
down, and just shipped out anything they had?”
“Yeah, but—” Kent shakes his head. “What I don’t understand is how this lizard could have a
twisted jaw when he was supposed to be captive raised. You don’t think they lied to me, do
you?”
On the way to his car after work, one of Kent’s lower molars begins to throb. Slight stabs of
pain come and go during the ride to his home in Thornton, a suburb twenty miles north of
Denver.
The next morning arrives with the left side of his jaw swollen, the pain full throttle. His dentist
tells him to come in at nine-thirty. He belts down two cups of coffee and wakes his
partner.
“Paul, my tooth’s killin’ me, so I’m goin’ to the dentist, right after I finish at the animal hospital.
Prob’ly make it to the store by ten or ten-thirty.”
Paul pulls himself out of bed and stretches his arms. “Okay. I’ll try to wake up! Good luck.”
The vet at the animal clinic smiles at Kent. “Looks like an old wound . . . some of the teeth are
messed up . . . but seems to have healed nicely.” Dr. Stephen Mason is considered the premier
bird and reptile doctor in Colorado. “But, as you know, chameleons are difficult to keep in
captivity. I’ll prescribe a good worm medication. Now I’m aware you afford your animals good
care. Just remember to keep a close eye on him.”
Kent nods. “Yeah, we’ve got a real nice set-up ready for ’im.” Although his tooth’s hurting like
hell, he can’t keep his eyes off the curly brown hair peeking through the top of the doctor’s silk
Hawaiian shirt. Kent finds a lot of things about the man attractive, especially his pale green
eyes, and decides the doctor’s soft but confident way of talking could mesmerize anyone or
anything. Probably why he does so well with animals.
Just as Kent begins to drift into a fantasy where they move closer, the sound of Mason’s voice
brings him back to reality. “Hey, Kent, I’ll stop by the shop soon and check out your new
arrivals!”
“Thanks, Steve. I’d appreciate that.”
On the way to the dentist, Kent thinks about his partner, Paul. Maybe things between us will get
better, now that he’s back from performing for those shows in Florida. Yeah! I need to
concentrate on how lucky I am and what’s real, like loving Paul, instead of fantasizing about a
hairy chested vet.
The dentist takes x-rays, but after reading them, returns with bewildering news. “Kent, your
teeth are perfect. The pictures show absolutely no cavities or infection. I’m at a total loss as to
why your jaw’s in pain.”
After the Exam, Kent drives back to the store, his mind racing with confusion. He walks in the
front door to find Paul closing a sale on a hand-raised “dwarf” parrot, a beautiful orange and
yellow sun conure named “Poppy.” One of the babies we hatched! All right! The profit margin’s
gonna be excellent! Combined with the customers’ choice of a white California Cage on
wheels, the sale is easily worth a thousand dollars.
Franco, a sixteen year old from the local Hispanic neighborhood who works at the store part
time, helps the customers to their car with food, litter, toys, extra perches, and a playpen.
“Well?” Kent stares at Paul. “How much? How’d they pay?”
“One thousand, four hundred thirty-three dollars and eighty-seven cents! American Express!”
Paul slaps a hand on the counter for drama. “Ta da!”
Kent’s smile grows and then fades. “Rats! Am Ex is slow; we’ll have to wait four or five days for
the money. Oh, well. Good job, Paul!”
“Yeah. And I told them the truth about how noisy those birds are!”
“Good!” Kent smiles while opening the cash register to examine the sales slip. “And—”
Paul laughs. “And I made it a point to mention our no return policy.”
Great. “Good job, Paul! You keep selling like this, maybe we’ll get outa debt. I have good news,
too. The Parsons is okay. An old injury, all healed!”
Kent takes the lizard from the box and lets him crawl onto one of the twisted manzanita
branches adorning the huge wire cage they’ve prepared with vines, ferns, artificial sun, and a
small waterfall to stimulate the chameleon to drink. The enclosure is safely padlocked and
located right next to the register, in order to circumvent shoplifters. Immediately, the eyes of the
lizard hone in on a calcium-dusted cricket in the open-top plastic box at the bottom of the cage.
As quickly as one can blink, his sticky tongue uncoils and picks up the cricket twenty inches
below.
“Okay!” Paul exclaims. “He’s eating, has excellent aim; all good signs. Hey, maybe we could
tell people his jaw’s supposed to look like that. As weird and unusual as he is, they wouldn’t
know any better.”
“No! Nothing but the truth. Anything else’s asking for trouble. You know that.” Kent recognizes
a squeak in his own voice that he knows irritates Paul.
I hate it when you whine like that, Kent . . . but you’re right. Guess I was just thinkin’ out loud.”
A sandy-haired boy saunters into the store and stops to look. A pattern of crisscrossing black
lines begins to appear on the sides of the Parsons, leaving small patches of blue in between.
The kid reads the sign and asks, “That’s a chameleon? Not anything like the little one I bought
at a carnival last summer.”
“That’s because those lizards aren’t really chameleons at all. The true ones are from Africa and
Madagascar,” Paul says.
“How come he’s plaid?” the kid asks.
Kent looks closer at the lizard. “Ha! Guess he does kinda look plaid.”
The young man nods. “Just like my uncle’s underwear!”
How’s he know what his uncle’s drawers look like? “Ha! Well, that may be, but it’s an old
folktale about why they change color patterns. Has nothing to do with what they’re on or
camouflage. Instead, it’s all about comfort level, temperature, and sexual attraction. Right now, I
would say he’s very content.”
Small crowds gather around the iridescent reptile throughout the afternoon, oohing and ahing.
Kent cups a hand over the side of his mouth and whispers to Paul. “I knew he’d be a big
draw.”
Then a customer reads the sign and exclaims, “Four hundred-dollars, for a lizard?”
“Yes!” Kent’s eyes open wide as he grits his teeth. “These aren’t ordinary lizards. They’re rare
and exotic. The species come all the way from Madagascar. However, this one’s captive raised,
which is much better. No stress. Ever heard you get what you pay for?”
“Yeah, but it looks to me like something’s wrong with its jaw.”
“It’s supposed to look like that; he’s prehistoric!” Kent blurts out.
The customer silently stares him down, then walks out. Kent turns to Paul and says, “Good
riddance!”
“What happened to being honest?” Paul asks, as he shakes his head and throws his hands up
in the air. “But, it’s not what you say, so much as how you say it. I wish you’d try to be nicer.
That customer always buys crickets. Maybe I should say always bought crickets.”
“I know. I know. I’ll try to be diplomatic next time a customer says something stupid!”
Paul’s eyes open wide. “Don’t forget about my benefit show tonight for Children with AIDS.
You’re taking money at the door, remember? By the way, how’s your tooth?”
“That’s strange. Forgot all about it.” Kent rubs his jaw with thumb and index finger, unable to
feel any swelling. “The pain’s gone! The dentist said he couldn’t find anything wrong. Must’ve
healed on its own . . . damnedest thing.”
“You guys!” A customer startles them with a scream. “The lizard’s eye is caught! On a wire!
Oooh, it’s awful! Hurry!”
They rush over; Kent unlocks the door. Paul carefully extracts the lizard from his accidental
self-impalement on a rogue wire sticking out from a back corner. Drops of blood ooze from the
puncture and the eyelid begins to blink erratically.
“Paul, I’m gonna take him to the vet.”
" Yeah, I think you’d better. But wait a minute before you go. I gotta use the bathroom. Feels like
something just flew into my eye and it’s irritating the hell outa me.”
Kent’s forehead wrinkles. “Really? Just now? That’s kinda strange. I’ll wait, but hurry. We
don’t dare let this chameleon die.”
hand. Paul suffers mental problems and spends money quicker than Kent can make it. Fire
ants, the IRS, the health department, and a radio talk show host wreak havoc with the store.
One day, Kent discovers a flaw in the way his bank processes ATM deposits. Through a
scheme involving his own checks and an ATM card, he pilfers $250,000 from his bank, a
thousand dollars at a time, over a period of seven months.
The Madagascar chameleon lays eggs, but turns out to be hermaphroditic. This starts a parade
of voyeurs, from worshiping transsexuals to bumbling wildlife agents.
As illness plagues Kent and Paul, they ponder a difficult question: Did the lizard or rotten luck
cause their woes? Will love help them overcome the odds?
Chapter One A Folktale's Basis in Fact
Masoala Peninsula, Madagascar
Mesenda stops dead in her tracks the second she feels a soft, undulating warmth under her left
foot. Peering down, she finds her bare toes curled over the twisted, broken jaw of a gentle
Madagascar rain forest chameleon. She staggers backward, skin sweltering. Five months
pregnant and two months bloated, her breath quickens as she realizes her baby’s entire future
hangs on a precipice.
The fateful day is the fourteenth of January in the year nineteen hundred ninety-six. The young
Malagasy native had just begun the long walk back to her village. Normally, she was more
careful, but this time she failed to heed her step, hot and tired from picking berries all day.
Mesenda’s ear-piercing wail echoes through the rainforest as she drops her basket and flees,
both hands cupping her belly to keep it from bouncing up and down like a jellyfish. She weeps
ever more loudly during the mile-long journey to her village. When she arrives, her voice is
gone, vocal chords ravaged from the intensity of her cries. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” she tells
herself. “Words are useless for one about to become an outcast.”
At the end of May, when the baby arrives, difficult and painful as the birth is, Mesenda remains
calm. The terror has run its course. She knows what to expect and is resigned to it.
The senior Malagasy wives had warned her about this taboo, this “fady.” “Do not cross the
path of ‘Barama,’ lizard with eyes in back of head. Don’t harm one scale on this creature, for if
you do, a lifetime of tears will follow.” But during the four months waiting to deliver the child,
she could not bring herself to tell the elders or her mate of the bad luck which had befallen her.
During the birthing, the midwives’ eyes fall upon the horribly misshapen jaw of the baby. Their
screams carry deep into the forest, because, although the baby’s deformity is tragic, it is also a
foreshadowing of misery yet to come. Now a reign of misogyny, famine, disease, and despair is
certain to sweep over the entire village.
* * * *
Two months later, on the outskirts of Manakara, Madagascar, a reptile collector meets with a
potential customer. The trapper appears pleased with the five days of hard work he’s put in
throughout the Masoala Peninsula. Crate after crate, filled with various species of lizards and
amphibians, lines the bed of his truck like a bizarre three-story prison for reptiles.
An American buyer eyes the luminous colors, focusing on the green shades inside the crate
filled with chamaeleo parsonii parsonii, the giant Parsons chameleon worth a small fortune to
the pet trade in the United States. He watches as each orange, bulbous eye rotates
independent of the other. For the first time, the man understands why the Malagasy claim the
lizards have eyes in the back of their heads. He looks them over for signs of ill health, but there
are so many crowded together, he fails to notice any that might have a crooked jaw.
After he pays the hunter with six American hundred-dollar bills, the buyer sifts through the
crates. He chooses the twelve collections he’s due from a wide assortment of chameleons, day
geckoes, tree frogs, skinks, turtles, and salamanders—subspecies of creatures so rare they
exist nowhere else on earth. Though the herpatiles seem to be trembling, unfamiliar with the
limits of confinement, their skin pigments glisten in the afternoon sun like shimmering rubies,
glistening emeralds, and translucent watercolor diamonds, a veritable living rainbow.
A plane whisks them from the Manakara airport to a wholesale distributor in Miami Beach.
* * * *
A driver for The Florida Reptile House rescues the boxes from twelve hours in a dark, hot
corner of the airport warehouse on July twenty-first and takes them to the wholesaler’s
facilities. Separating the living from the dead, the young man dumps those still moving into
holding cages sans food and water, where they will stay for another twelve hours, until the
morning shift arrives. Hungry and dehydrated, the beautiful creatures cling side by side to the
welded wire of their homemade cages, their prognosis more negative with each passing
hour.
The very next day, the imported critters trickle into pet shops across America, most arriving on
their sides, inanimate or moribund. The few still capable of remaining upright also lie still,
immobilized by the confines of cloth shipping bags.
* * * *
Denver, Colorado; United States of America
On July twenty-second, the first of the bounty still living begins to trickle into pet shops across
America. Inside Colorado Ranch and Pet Supply, owner Kent Weschester opens a box fresh
from Denver International Airport.
He pulls at an ungiving flap of cardboard on the lid, sighs, and turns to his partner of fourteen
years. “Paul, would you hand me your knife? Tape won’t tear. Tell me, did they have ’em
unloaded from the plane and ready?”
“Naw!” Paul Sheridan scowls, his thirty-seven year-old Cherokee skin glowing under the
store’s fluorescent light. He slides behind and wraps his arms around Kent’s chest, while
resting his chin on Kent’s shoulder. “Those assholes left our boxes on the dock in the hot sun,
as usual. If anything’s wrong with the Parsons, I’ll be sick!”
Kent pulls loose. “Not now, baby! It feels good, but we gotta give these critters some TLC.” He
pecks Paul on the cheek and removes bags from the box marked "G Day Gecko, W Box
Turtle," and "RE tree frog," before finding one labeled "P Chameleon." He lifts the cotton sack
and unties the string. Feeling a smile growing on his forty-nine year-old face, he pulls the big
beautiful creature from the bag. It crawls up an arm to his shoulder, barely touching Kent’s
blond hair.
“Wow!” Paul steps back. “He’s beautiful! And huge!” The eyes are bright and clear, rotating a
full three hundred sixty degrees, like periscopes checking out unfamiliar, perhaps dangerous,
territory. A cool turquoise luminescence washes over the chameleon’s entire head and
continues on to the back and stomach, where it abruptly changes to a lustrous emerald, and in
a resplendent finale, transforms into a vivid jade on the prehensile tail.
Kent knows, in all truth, it’s a real dinosaur. However, unlike the gargantuan ones, it’s
somehow a survivor of the earth’s unholy carnage through the last sixty-five million years. Yet,
the true chameleon is fragile when forcibly confined, not unlike its human captors.
Placing his hand under the twenty-three inch slow-moving chameleon, Kent lifts it up for a
better look. “Damn! Look at the jaw! It’s crooked! How could they send me one so messed up?
Could be a sign of an infection . . . or a calcium deficiency.”
Kent picks up the phone to call The Florida Reptile House. An unfamiliar voice answers.
“Yes?”
“Is this the lizard wholesaler?” Kent asks.
“Not any more. This is the Internal Revenue Service. We’re bolting the doors to lock down
seized property. This facility is now owned by the United States government.”
Kent quickly hangs up the phone. “We’re screwed—by their bad luck. IRS just closed ’em
down.”
“What happened?”
“Didn’t ask. I have no desire to cozy-up to the IRS. It’s obvious anyway. Didn’t pay their taxes.”
“Shit!” Paul says. “That’s the third supplier gone under this year. It’s hard being in the pet
business—wholesale or retail. How many retailers gone down this year, anyway?”
“Four between here and Boulder, I think. I guess we’re fortunate to have built the business
back up from the pitts.” Kent smiles at Paul and plants a kiss on his lips. He has such beautiful
blue eyes and smooth, warm lips! I’m a lucky man. “So glad I found you in Oklahoma when I
was drying out from my coke habit, man. Hadn’t been for you, I woulda lost everything.”
Paul wraps his arms around Kent and nuzzles his neck. “Just think. If you hadn’t pulled me
away from that stock boy job at Wal-Mart, I might still be driving a Ford Escort! Ha! Remember
that piece of shit? Started falling apart from the day I bought it.”
“Yeah, the chrome-covered plastic parts’re what got me. Think that’s when I realized the quality
in America had begun to take a damned nose dive.”
“Speaking of quality, I don’t know why a supplier would send out a chameleon looking like this
one. Don’t they have any self-respect? Who knows, maybe they knew they were about to go
down, and just shipped out anything they had?”
“Yeah, but—” Kent shakes his head. “What I don’t understand is how this lizard could have a
twisted jaw when he was supposed to be captive raised. You don’t think they lied to me, do
you?”
On the way to his car after work, one of Kent’s lower molars begins to throb. Slight stabs of
pain come and go during the ride to his home in Thornton, a suburb twenty miles north of
Denver.
The next morning arrives with the left side of his jaw swollen, the pain full throttle. His dentist
tells him to come in at nine-thirty. He belts down two cups of coffee and wakes his
partner.
“Paul, my tooth’s killin’ me, so I’m goin’ to the dentist, right after I finish at the animal hospital.
Prob’ly make it to the store by ten or ten-thirty.”
Paul pulls himself out of bed and stretches his arms. “Okay. I’ll try to wake up! Good luck.”
The vet at the animal clinic smiles at Kent. “Looks like an old wound . . . some of the teeth are
messed up . . . but seems to have healed nicely.” Dr. Stephen Mason is considered the premier
bird and reptile doctor in Colorado. “But, as you know, chameleons are difficult to keep in
captivity. I’ll prescribe a good worm medication. Now I’m aware you afford your animals good
care. Just remember to keep a close eye on him.”
Kent nods. “Yeah, we’ve got a real nice set-up ready for ’im.” Although his tooth’s hurting like
hell, he can’t keep his eyes off the curly brown hair peeking through the top of the doctor’s silk
Hawaiian shirt. Kent finds a lot of things about the man attractive, especially his pale green
eyes, and decides the doctor’s soft but confident way of talking could mesmerize anyone or
anything. Probably why he does so well with animals.
Just as Kent begins to drift into a fantasy where they move closer, the sound of Mason’s voice
brings him back to reality. “Hey, Kent, I’ll stop by the shop soon and check out your new
arrivals!”
“Thanks, Steve. I’d appreciate that.”
On the way to the dentist, Kent thinks about his partner, Paul. Maybe things between us will get
better, now that he’s back from performing for those shows in Florida. Yeah! I need to
concentrate on how lucky I am and what’s real, like loving Paul, instead of fantasizing about a
hairy chested vet.
The dentist takes x-rays, but after reading them, returns with bewildering news. “Kent, your
teeth are perfect. The pictures show absolutely no cavities or infection. I’m at a total loss as to
why your jaw’s in pain.”
After the Exam, Kent drives back to the store, his mind racing with confusion. He walks in the
front door to find Paul closing a sale on a hand-raised “dwarf” parrot, a beautiful orange and
yellow sun conure named “Poppy.” One of the babies we hatched! All right! The profit margin’s
gonna be excellent! Combined with the customers’ choice of a white California Cage on
wheels, the sale is easily worth a thousand dollars.
Franco, a sixteen year old from the local Hispanic neighborhood who works at the store part
time, helps the customers to their car with food, litter, toys, extra perches, and a playpen.
“Well?” Kent stares at Paul. “How much? How’d they pay?”
“One thousand, four hundred thirty-three dollars and eighty-seven cents! American Express!”
Paul slaps a hand on the counter for drama. “Ta da!”
Kent’s smile grows and then fades. “Rats! Am Ex is slow; we’ll have to wait four or five days for
the money. Oh, well. Good job, Paul!”
“Yeah. And I told them the truth about how noisy those birds are!”
“Good!” Kent smiles while opening the cash register to examine the sales slip. “And—”
Paul laughs. “And I made it a point to mention our no return policy.”
Great. “Good job, Paul! You keep selling like this, maybe we’ll get outa debt. I have good news,
too. The Parsons is okay. An old injury, all healed!”
Kent takes the lizard from the box and lets him crawl onto one of the twisted manzanita
branches adorning the huge wire cage they’ve prepared with vines, ferns, artificial sun, and a
small waterfall to stimulate the chameleon to drink. The enclosure is safely padlocked and
located right next to the register, in order to circumvent shoplifters. Immediately, the eyes of the
lizard hone in on a calcium-dusted cricket in the open-top plastic box at the bottom of the cage.
As quickly as one can blink, his sticky tongue uncoils and picks up the cricket twenty inches
below.
“Okay!” Paul exclaims. “He’s eating, has excellent aim; all good signs. Hey, maybe we could
tell people his jaw’s supposed to look like that. As weird and unusual as he is, they wouldn’t
know any better.”
“No! Nothing but the truth. Anything else’s asking for trouble. You know that.” Kent recognizes
a squeak in his own voice that he knows irritates Paul.
I hate it when you whine like that, Kent . . . but you’re right. Guess I was just thinkin’ out loud.”
A sandy-haired boy saunters into the store and stops to look. A pattern of crisscrossing black
lines begins to appear on the sides of the Parsons, leaving small patches of blue in between.
The kid reads the sign and asks, “That’s a chameleon? Not anything like the little one I bought
at a carnival last summer.”
“That’s because those lizards aren’t really chameleons at all. The true ones are from Africa and
Madagascar,” Paul says.
“How come he’s plaid?” the kid asks.
Kent looks closer at the lizard. “Ha! Guess he does kinda look plaid.”
The young man nods. “Just like my uncle’s underwear!”
How’s he know what his uncle’s drawers look like? “Ha! Well, that may be, but it’s an old
folktale about why they change color patterns. Has nothing to do with what they’re on or
camouflage. Instead, it’s all about comfort level, temperature, and sexual attraction. Right now, I
would say he’s very content.”
Small crowds gather around the iridescent reptile throughout the afternoon, oohing and ahing.
Kent cups a hand over the side of his mouth and whispers to Paul. “I knew he’d be a big
draw.”
Then a customer reads the sign and exclaims, “Four hundred-dollars, for a lizard?”
“Yes!” Kent’s eyes open wide as he grits his teeth. “These aren’t ordinary lizards. They’re rare
and exotic. The species come all the way from Madagascar. However, this one’s captive raised,
which is much better. No stress. Ever heard you get what you pay for?”
“Yeah, but it looks to me like something’s wrong with its jaw.”
“It’s supposed to look like that; he’s prehistoric!” Kent blurts out.
The customer silently stares him down, then walks out. Kent turns to Paul and says, “Good
riddance!”
“What happened to being honest?” Paul asks, as he shakes his head and throws his hands up
in the air. “But, it’s not what you say, so much as how you say it. I wish you’d try to be nicer.
That customer always buys crickets. Maybe I should say always bought crickets.”
“I know. I know. I’ll try to be diplomatic next time a customer says something stupid!”
Paul’s eyes open wide. “Don’t forget about my benefit show tonight for Children with AIDS.
You’re taking money at the door, remember? By the way, how’s your tooth?”
“That’s strange. Forgot all about it.” Kent rubs his jaw with thumb and index finger, unable to
feel any swelling. “The pain’s gone! The dentist said he couldn’t find anything wrong. Must’ve
healed on its own . . . damnedest thing.”
“You guys!” A customer startles them with a scream. “The lizard’s eye is caught! On a wire!
Oooh, it’s awful! Hurry!”
They rush over; Kent unlocks the door. Paul carefully extracts the lizard from his accidental
self-impalement on a rogue wire sticking out from a back corner. Drops of blood ooze from the
puncture and the eyelid begins to blink erratically.
“Paul, I’m gonna take him to the vet.”
" Yeah, I think you’d better. But wait a minute before you go. I gotta use the bathroom. Feels like
something just flew into my eye and it’s irritating the hell outa me.”
Kent’s forehead wrinkles. “Really? Just now? That’s kinda strange. I’ll wait, but hurry. We
don’t dare let this chameleon die.”
Gale Chester Whittington, Gay Author
Free Novel Excerpt
Way late at night, I get a craving;My soul needs light; My heart needs saving.
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| True Chameleon By Gale Chester Whittington ===Copyright 2004-2009=== This book needs a publisher. an excerpt follows this Short Synopsis |
| FreeFishCareTips.com |
| Female Parsons Chameleon photo |
| SOOTH YOUR SOUL! Visit my other website for exquisite pics and expert tips on flowers, fish, guppies, and ponds. FreeFishCareTips.com |
