I apologize now for this being so long!



About five months ago, my best guy friend got a 2 wk old veiled chameleon at a reptile show. Surprisingly both the tree the chameleon came with and the chameleon are both alive. Since the chameleon is kept in his bedroom I almost never see it, but he asked me to babysit it yesterday while he went on a roadtrip. So, he brought it to my house, in the cage, in the cold car, without anything covering the cage. I know being transported like that stresses out a lot of animals, so I figure it didn't help the poor chameleon much.



About two weeks ago I learned that his only "heat source" was the UVB light that came with the 'package' he got the chameleon as. Soooo I got a red heat light (60 watt) for him, because we we'd been going through a really bad cold spell and I was worried. My understanding is that for the entire time he's had the chameleon, the UVB light has been on, and since he got the heatlight, that's been on the entire time too. 24/7.



The chameleon (named muffin) arrived at my house yesterday afternoon. I set him up and covered his cage on two sides with a towel, since I have other animals and I didn't want him to see them and get stressed. I put the heat light on a dimmer and lowered it a bit (it was about 75 in my room at the time), misted him thoroughly (he drank like he was parched), and then left him alone. Only time I went near him again was when I added some crickets I'd picked up when I went food shopping for everyone else, and again to mist him before bed and turn off the UVB light.



This morning, I went to turn on the UVB light and he was asleep with his head pointing down, resting in the crook of some branches. Aw, cute. Well, after about an hour of him like that I went to mist and he just about fell off the branch, and then he seemed to be stuck on his side, feebly waving his legs around. I picked him up (put my finger where his legs were grabbing and let him climb onto me) to get a better look and he looked awful! When I first looked at him his sides seemed almost translucent, with no color over the ribs, and his head seemed to have black patches on it in the middle. He just didn't look healthy.

I took some pictures but he'd changed colors some. He couldn't seem to hold up his head or have any sort of coordination. His head looks...funky to me, although it could be just that I don't have any experience with veiled chameleons. I held him under the heat lamp for a bit, hoping maybe warming him up would help, and it did seem to. I took these pictures right after holding him under the heat lamp.



I just want to know what's going on, if anything. Is he healthy or is there something else that needs to be done? I don't think he's been getting dusted food much, if ever, although my friend does have the dust. He's been feeding muffin primarily mealworms in a little cup that he leaves in the cage.



Temps: 100 directly beneath the heatlamp, 84 2" away from the heatlamp, 72 is the ambient temperature in the room. Ambient humidity in here is 50%, and I've just put in one of my humidity gauges into the cage, since my friend didn't have one. Here are pictures of muffin:















Thanks in advance for any help!!



~jenny
-----
1.4 normal ball pythons (Cindy, Darwin, Periscope, and dah bebbies)

0.2 rescue chinese water dragons (Yoni and Linga)

1.0 rex rat (Scurvy)

1.0 gerbil (Yerbul)

0.1 mice (Cute Girl Mousy)

0.1 bunny (Spazz)

0.0.5 tropical fish (tetras and a neon blue gourami)

2.2 great danes (Shasta, Odysseus, Merlot, and Watson)

1.0 fat fuzzy mutt (Smokey)

1.1 cats (Thidwick and Turtle)

3.0 horses (Buddy, Sam, and Scout)

1.0 goat (Billy Jack)

0.0.1 chupacabra (it ate our chickens)



jenny.thegreenes.org

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