Karma Chameleon
Karma Chameleon

Karma, old picture style
(I shot a lot of pictures, almost all of them came out fuzzy, I'm not too good with a camera. This one I played a bit with in Photoshop and made it black and white. I find it rather neat looking now, it has an old quality to it I love..)

My first veiled chameleon I recieved on my 17th birthday. He was a subadult male, approximately 6 months old. I named him Karma, after the song "Karma Chameleon" by the Culture Club. I researched veiled chameleons for about 2 years BEFORE I got him, and even today I continue my research on them. After 6 months, my veiled chameleon mysteriously died. I purchased adult crickets by the thousand through the mail, and I always got them either late, or not at all. The last batch I got through the mail was extremely late, and the postman told me that there was no charge to them, which was rather odd. I thought nothing of it, and immediately fed them to my veiled chameleon (a mistake in itself). Within half an hour he was laying on the ground of his cage, on his side, shaking violently. It looked almost as though he was having a seizure. Another half an hour passed before he finally passed on.
I have asked around about what could have caused the death of my veiled chameleon, and have gotten many different ideas. One employee at a pet store told me that all adult crickets were poisonous to reptiles. I highly doubt this, though. Another person in a message board told me that sometimes they carried a deadly pathogen. This seems more likely than the first. I was told never to order adults by several different people, and never to order through the mail again, by more people, including the breeder I got my veiled chameleon from! He lost an entire clutch of babies to crickets he got through the mail once. If anyone knows anything about what could have caused the death of my baby, pleast e-mail me at Dragontmr1@aol.com!!!

My second veiled chameleon, and the one I have now, is Karma II. I got him at the age of three weeks, and he is now going on 10 months old as of february 2000. I have had my veiled chameleon forever, it almost seems, and I consider him my baby. Him and I have a love/hate relationship going on. I love him to death, he hates my guts! Even when I first got him, the pet store owner warned me to get him home as quickly as possible, because he didnt' look too happy in the small carrier they put him in. I brought him home immediately and set him up inside a small five gallon, which was later replaced by a ten gallon, and as he continued to grow, replaced by the 55 gallon I have him in today. Karma will eat directly from my hand, and if I'm too close to the tank, he'll try to attack me through the glass. He absolutely HATES me, and always has!

I have the species C. calyptratus calyptratus. My first veiled chameleon was a C. c. calcarifer. Karma II doesn't have as ideal of coloration as my first one did, possibly due to the fact that I don't have ideal lighting or foliage in the tank set-up. My first set-up for the tank was far more complex, but I simplified it for my second chameleon, so that it would be easier to clean without as much stress to the chameleon with moving objects around.