Feeding Fred - and a mystery.

As promised yesterday, I made a concerted effort to get pics of Fred being hand-fed by Della, my wife. And I was successful - to some extent. Unfortunately the 'strike' is incredibly quick, and my little ole camera battled to keep up. Plus I am no photographer!

However - I think we caught the essence of it all - so here is Fred waiting for breakfast. He is an ambush hunter himself, and he would not strike until the dogs had been put away, and once he felt that there was no threat to himself, he happily ate everything offered to him.

Here is Fred being shown his breakfast - a bright green, juicy, grasshopper....

Here is the strike - and you can see that his eyes are focused forwards, and he has already extended his tongue and is retracting it with the grasshopper before I could click the button. Quick! And sorry the pic is slightly grainy - but the best I could do.

For our next trick, I am attempting to convince Della to let Fred take the grasshopper from her mouth - or at least from between her lips. If I can get them both to do this, I am certain I could hire them out for children's parties and so on. (There's gold in them thar hills!). If  can - I will post a pic of Della holding the grasshopper in her mouth.

In the meantime - here is one very happy Fred. Yum yum!

And now - for today's mystery! Fred managed to create a gigantic poop - which we cleaned out of his cage.  For such a small fellow, his production was enormous - about the same length as my baby finger but about half the thickness, and we threw it away because a) it was smelly, and b) if you all want to see poop you can look at your own every morning.

However..........in addition to his poop - which was a standard carnivore brown, he (she?) also produced a small, bright yellow package. I personally think that this is an egg pouch - and because the eggs were not fertilized by a male, they have been rejected. But I am not sure. I have seen a chameleon laying eggs before - they dig a hole in the sand and lay their eggs there - but in the instance where I saw this happen, I did not disturb the mother, and so have no idea if this was a yellow pouch or single eggs. I do know that the eggs take about 10 months to hatch. And Fred did not bury them - he just deposited them on the sandy floor of his cage.

So - if there is anyone out there who has any clue as to what Fred produced - please let me know.

Thaaaaat's all folks. have a great day!