The Pet Shop: Chameleons

It wasn’t long after she started her shift that day that she saw a middle-aged man looking around the store.

“What’d you be looking for, sir?” She asked, carrying the polite but mildly disinterested tone of someone saying that as part of their job.

“A gift for my son. I’m looking for something like a lizard or something that can be kept in a small habitat.”

“We have a decent selection of lizards over in the second aisle from the left. I’ll do my best to answer any questions you might have.”

The man nodded and looked around a bit longer, stopping at a habitat tank with a chameleon clinging to a twig. “A chameleon would probably be something he’d like.”

“Oh, that’s not a chameleon, sir. You’re looking at the twig.” She said as she came over and dumped some crickets into the habitat. Immediately the man noticed one of the limbs of the twig seeming to flicker for a moment as three crickets disappeared. “Now that there is the chameleon.”

The man’s eyes widened with shock and confusion. “Wait, I don’t understand.”

“It’s simple, really. Animals in the wild change to blend into their environments. It’s just that in this case it happened from the other end as well, chameleons and twigs looking more and more like each other. Eventually they just lost track and ended up swapping places. What looks like the twig is actually the chameleon.” She pulled out what looked like the chameleon from the habitat and handed it to him. “See? It’s just wood.”

Sure enough he could feel the coarseness of the grain, and the lack of heft. It was wood in greater detail than any carving could possibly have. The closer he looked the more he was unsure whether it was really a plant.

She took the twig back and put it in the habitat. “The chameleon gets nervous if it doesn’t have a twig like that to cling to.” Turning back to the customer. “But as far as pets go, most people find the chameleon too confusing. Your son might think you just tried to dupe him with a wood carving. But feel free to keep looking around. Just holler if you have a question, I need to deal with the overflow in the goldfish tank.”

(Originally written 12/20/2015)