Advice needed on my veiled (we had an accident)...

Well my veiled Tarzan is about 4 months and probably the meanest one around. He has always been pissy but we had an incident that was a huge set back.
He always is on the move in his cage and never just chills like my panther. He is always climbing on the top of his cage up side down. He hates it when I spray him and when I put crix and worms in his cage. He hates the thought of me.
I leave him alone and never try to handle him because I feel if he does not like me then I will not try and get him use to me.
Well I was misting his cage and somehow one of the bulbs popped. I only had a big bulb so I stuck it in there not thinking. Well since he climbs on his back upside down most of the time he burned two of his little toes (you saw it coming but I didnt). I am so upset that I did not think about that. I immediately replaced it with a much shorter bulb. I had to get him out to put some panalog on his toes --he freaked and turned to bite me while he was walking forward and I dropped him.
He did not fall but like a foot and landed on a folded towel (thank God) and I felt like a piece of poo. I put a sock on my hand to pick him up because he is like a snapping piranha when you try and scoop him up. He runs and never calms down enough to just sit on your hand. When I had him with the sock he was pretty chill but I think at this point it was more like shock. I quickly put the ointment on his toes and put him back in his cage. He is now even worse with me and I am afraid I will never have a relaxed veiled now. I dont want him to be handleable (I do but that is not my main concern) but I want him to be able to enjoy his environment.
I have raised his cage about 16 more inches off the ground so the top of his cage is almost 7 feet and the bottom is 4 feet off the ground. I thought that might help keep him from climbing on the top of his cage all the time. I know when chams are stressed they try and climb up so I thought he might feel a little more secure if I made it higher and hopefully eliminate his obsessive need to climb.
Now that I feel like the worlds worst chameleon owner I dont know what to do. The fall was the night before last and I raised his cage up this evening. I am hoping tomorrow he will wake up a bit better.
I cant even walk by his cage with out him fully opening his mouth and hissing loudly while turning in my direction to bite. Mind you he does this now even when I am walking 2 feet away from his cage.
My panther on the other hand has become quite the enjoyable chameleon. He loves his showers, eats from my hands, walks to the front of his cage when I open it and is awesome. He has a bum eye so I have to put ointment in his eye every other day and he has grown use to me. He never put up the fight this baby veiled has from day one. Are some just born killers and other more apt to tolerating you in there space. Tarzan (Veiled) when I go to turn his lights on in the morning he is usually just getting up and waiting to bask. He jumps on his branch like a mad monkey. Should he be with a more experienced keeper? I dont want him to live a stressed life. If I have to I will let someone who knows chams better have him or trade me for a baby of some sort??
I am very worried and I dont know what to do.
Thanks for listening... any suggestions would help. Even if it is to say, yes find him a better owner. My feelings wont get hurt I just want a happy cham.

Give it time...i dont think he will ever be ok with being held but he will probably get used to the fact that youre not a threat when you are just walking by.

Hi herpluva
Sorry to hear that.
But, you should not be too stressed out.
First of all, veiled chameleon is very moody in general.
Panther are more social.
It is very normal to see a veiled gets timid over his owner.
Time is the essence.

I seen people that experience 1 unfortunate event and their veiled never able to forget and see them as a threat eversince.
But, i also seen some that are able to learn eventually that their owner is not a threat.

It gets very personal. Veiled strangely mimic humans behavior sometimes.
There are those who never willing to learn how to forgive and forget.
But there are those who will.
I don't know exactly how Tarzan fits in this matter.

What you can do is try to minimize contact for few weeks.
Maybe put a partition that blocks his view from you passing by.
Only contact him when you need to feed, mist, and clean the cage (for this particular activity maybe once a month).

Moves slowly, avoid sudden and fast movement, and calm yourself down.
I heard these creatures are able to hear your heart rate.
There are studies that claim that chameleon tends to be calmer around people with a relaxed heart rate.

Made yourself especially known when you bring him FOOD.
Soon he'll learn that your arrival means FOOD and WATER.

Some people might disagree with this but here is my opinion.
First of all give a good amount of time (couple of weeks) for him to calm down.
Then I would suggest you to handle him once every 2 or 3 weeks or even
once a month.
Wear a glove to avoid getting bitten and accidentally throwing him.

Instead of catching him with your hands, offer him a stick and let him perch on it. and SLOWLY take him out of the cage. Sit down still and let him crawl and climb up your body (don't be scared or get your heart rate too excited.
Just relax).
Once you get him comfortable around 15 minutes or so..
Gently return him to the cage.

Handling chameleon is stressful for the lizard and for the owner.
But, i think in the end, it will be worth it.
It reduces the lizard stress.
If you do not handle him, he'll grow an attitude and getting stressed everytime he saw you is definitely not a good thing because he will see you often. So, he better learn to adjust to it.

One most important thing is PATIENCE.
In fact, my chameleon is also starting to hate me.
just because the first 2 times I take him out always end up in a vet's office
for checkup. (last visit is very stressful for him because the nurse almost drop my chameleon to the floor! lucky i manage to catch him before something horrible happen.. I will never let nurses handle my cham anymore. Just the vet and I will have access!

Now he's wary whenever i wear my brown gloves.
And get extremely aggressive toward my gloves
But, i have to wear them coz i don't want to get bitten.

sigh.. tomorrow i need to take him out for a major cage cleaning,
his cage starts to stink today.
So, i will have to clean it out for his and my own good.

I understood your feelings really..

Keep persevere! he'll learn to love you someday.

you may not realize it but you're training him to react to you by some of you actions
as long as he's in his territory he's going to defend it
since there's no other chameleons around ... he's stuck with the bad mean monkey
to strike out against.

what I do is buy some 99¢ gardening gloves (flat color no designs)
and start handling them in the evening when the lights are low.
just hold him without fondling and watch a movie or something with the rest of the rooms lights off
he'll be much calmer that way and may even sleep a bit.

That way you have him start associating calm states with being handled
it isn't a magic fix but it's a start.

Thanks for all the advice.
He was a little more chill today. I think elevating his cage higher helped. He did still climb upside down on the top of his screen but not as much and he also basked for a while. I stuck two butter worms in his cage and did not move my hand and he ate them quickly so I am trying to make peace with him. I am going to order some horn and silkworms to give as treats since he seems to be a worm lover (do chams like phoenix worms like beardies do?). All I have at the moment is wax, butter, super worms and those are just treats. I have been misting him twice as long each time and it seems to help him calm down. If I mist him for like five minutes he stays mad and on the move. I doubled the misting time to like fifteen minutes and he finally just sat there and started to enjoy it. My panther loves his mistings.
PS I got some garden gloves today

I really like Jeweledchameleon's answer. I am going to try and handle my boy Jigsaw tonight. When the lights are dim I will try to make friends with him because he really seems to hate being touched. He doesn't mind when I mist him or open his cage door. So that's a start already.

veiled chams

The veiled chameleon is one of the more aggressive chameleon species by nature. I got lucky and didn't listen to everything i read online and handled my cham everyday for five minutes from the time he was 3 months old until now. Now i can handle him anytime for however long i want to and he will tolerate other people holding him as well. He allows me to touch around his mouth, his crest, anywhere i wish because he realizes that I am not a threat.

My female veiled on the other hand has never gotten used to me holding her and probably never will. She's very territorial and will hiss and strike out at me at any given opportunity. It took me to have to trick her into my hand to be able to put her in my male's cage to mate.

All in all some chams are just naturally meaner than others, and it usually doesn't have to do with the owner. My friend bought a cham from the petstore (about a 3.5 month old one) and it was angrier than an old man trying to return soup at the deli. He was told not to handle his cham and now it will make suicide dives just to bite his hand. So my advice is give it time...move slowly... and try to make contact with him everyday so he gets used to you

Dodolah gave some outstanding advice. Veileds are a royal pain, but when they come around they are a lot of fun. Clyde hates being picked up, but once I have him in my hand he has a good time. I probably ruined whatever agenda he had for the day (climbing, eating worms, climbing, looking around, climbing ).

One thing I would add about the food part. Whenever I bring Clyde food, I always offer him one of whatever I am bringing and make sure he sees that there is more and where I'm putting it. That really helped.

Last thing, his cage is about 4 feet from my computer desk. When I'm in here (which is often) I open his cage door so he can see me. He's gotten to the point where he will come out of his cage and sit at the end of the door closest to me just to watch. It lets him get used to me, and I let him roam about for many hours before I pick him up. Give him the impression that HE'S in charge lol.

RhettusMaximus said:

He was told not to handle his cham and now it will make suicide dives just to bite his hand. So my advice is give it time...move slowly... and try to make contact with him everyday so he gets used to you

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Haha dude. that's the funniest thing ever. suicide dives.

Talking about the suicide dives... When I had my Cham Fred in a tall ficus tree in my living room. He sat on a branch and just stared into my eye, if I moved he would move. All of a sudden he just jumped from the branch. He must have had a plan because he caught himself and started to book it up the tree. He must have thought I couldn't see him anymore.

I also find him walking on the ground and then climbing up the side of the cage (I put a vine in that he can use but he likes to climb the wall of the cage.)