Dr. Jose Chameleon

I mentioned in the previous post a certain dog by the name of Zorro. And I must apologize for stating such rude things about his mental capacity as I did without any sort of background. You see, he has recently proven himself a little short of brain cells in a certain incident involving a potentially deadly reptilian horror. Let me back up.

In the beginning (of this story), there existed a snake about as big around as my pinky finger and as long perhaps as, say, a yardstick. Now this snake was knotted in a great tangled mess about eight feet up in a tree which had previously been the habitat of a certain chameleon. Yet, for the sake of the hungering belly of the reptilian monstrosity, the chameleon had consented in the most contradictory sense, to be swallowed whole as a late afternoon snack. The venomous viper, however, didn’t quite know what he was getting himself into and seemed to bite off more than he could chew. Quite literally, in fact. In other words, for about ten minutes he was completely immobilized by a chameleon five times as big around as he hanging half out of his mouth. My brothers, mother, Cosmas, Akol and I stood about the base of said tree for said amount of time while we waited for said snake to swallow said chameleon just enough to completely impede him from any free movement, without even the option of spitting the chameleon back out again to save his life. (You see, we have much experience with snakes vomiting their prey down on us from up in trees. One snake vomited four baby birds just before his death all of which Zorro consumed soon after. But that is another story)

When the snake had swallowed all but the tail of the poor heroic chameleon, Cosmas and Akol had us wazungu, who have as everyone knows absolutely no aim whatsoever, gather up quite a pile of stones and bricks with which to pelt the snake. We did so and I would like to attribute a good portion of the success of the execution to our stone-gathering efforts. But it was after the thing had been expertly knocked to the ground that our dear Mexican hero, Zorro, decided to step in. He waltzed right up to the thing, sniffed, poked with a grubby paw, and refused to flinch as the viper flung itself up into an offensive position and darted its head back and forth, fangs bared and tongue whistling. It looked exactly like a hooded cobra does before it strikes, only pathetically lacking in the head gear department. If only his pathetic appearance was worse than his bite. I fear to report that had it not been for the following actions performed by Cosmas, our dear dog would be no more. But it seems the dog feared the pain of stoning more than death by a mamba, and so he was convinced to hop out of the way just in time. We then completed the task of beating the snake’s head till the poison ran from his fangs and sank into the earth, never to slow the heart of another beast.

As a result of this fearful ordeal, our dear Zorro has rejected any caution he may have learned from it, and to this day has gained absolutely no wisdom as concerns potentially deadly serpentine horrors. And in case you were wondering, the title of this blog post has absolutely nothing to do with the story, besides the obvious fact that they both contain the word chameleon. Dr. Jose Chameleon is in fact the name of a musician who has, as far as I know, no reptilian connections.