Sometimes the picture we take, even with a full zoom on a quality lens will not get close enough. I would have needed a telescope to get the picture I wanted. You can see him nearly dead center in the picture.
It's a mature Chamaeleo jacksonii (common names Jackson's Chameleon or Three-horned Chameleon)... an African chameleon belonging to the chameleon family (Chamaeleonidae). This subspecies that is distinct to Hawaii is called the Chamaeleo jacksonii xantholophus. I wrote about him earlier reflecting on how easily it is to handle him. You can find the previous topic entitled "Miniature Triceratops"
Here he is badly pixelated after editing and cropping with Adobe Photoshop. But you can still see he is much larger than the fellow we got to know earlier.
I actually saw him from 50 yards away! Sitting in the livingroom with a new read in my hands "The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki, I took a moment to gaze out the window thinking on a point being made in the text, when all of a sudden on that wire there was that familiar motion, contour and color. I went to the front porch astonished to see him and his fragile body walking directly above the moving traffic of cars and trucks, carefully placing one foot in front of the other. You could see the wind buffet his body but his feet held fast. I quickly got the camera, went to the front porch and braced the side of the zoom lens on the vertical trim on the house, hoping to have a steady enough shot to get the focal point on the lizard when clicking. Needless to say, he was smaller than the focal point. We stopped watching him once he cleared the highway.
As I had stated before, they move ever so slowly and they certainly don't walk fast if they even cared to. I chuckle because for the first time in many years this evening we were watching Jurassic Park. We had it recorded on our DVR and stopped it right after the TRex ate the lawyer. My wife and I sat ourselves down to do some reading and zap there we have a miniature triceratops walking a wire.
This place is still a gas.
