Avery the Escape Artist

Ian and I often discuss whether we think Avery is bored of living in her terrarium and if she has hobbies.  While the jury is out on our chameleon's boredom level, we have ascertained that she has at least one preferred hobby - trying to escape.  Avery will go weeks where she will look very content in her terrarium; she'll bask in the heat lamp, climb in the vines and generally look happy and healthy.  But every once and a while, it must be scheduled in her chameleon date book, that today is "Escape Attempt Day".  Yesterday was one of those days.  

In the morning, Avery tried to escape by digging her way out of the bottom left hand corner of the glass terrarium.  No luck.

At lunch, she attempted to climb out through the wire mesh at the top of the terrarium.  Again, not much success.

In the afternoon, she worked at pushing the locked door of the terrarium open in order to make her escape.  Unfortunately, no go on this front either.

Can you see Avery at the very top of the ficus tree?

Sometimes I do let Avery out (much to Ian's chagrin) to climb up the indoor ficus tree next to her terrarium; however, I have learned from experience that it is not a good idea to do this when she is in "escape mode".

Avery is escaping!  Uh oh!

When Avery is focused on escaping she isn't content to look out the window from the top of the ficus (which is what she usually does) but instead tries to run away across my office carpet (to some mysterious chameleon paradise, I suppose).  Chasing a runaway chameleon is a bit stressful, so after doing it once, I have not made that mistake again.

As such, Avery was destined to remain in her terrarium yesterday despite her valiant attempts otherwise.  Hopefully, today she focuses on a new hobby - Jedi mind tricks, perhaps?