Cham acting weird after escape

[angienminerva]

Hi everyone. I've had my female veiled chameleon for about a year and a half now. I made her a free range tree to put in my room so she doesn't have to live her life in a cage. Both times I've put her on the tree she has climbed down and climbed behind my dresser with a bunch of cords behind it. I don't understand why she keeps trying to climb down (or how she got down because there was no path to the floor). I know she is not ready to lay another clutch of eggs, her last clutch was at the end of May. Ok so that's my first questions, why is she climbing out of the tree.

Ok so here is my next question the one I'm worried about. Ok so the first time she crawled out of her tree I found her and put her back. She got a little dark when I picked her up but no hissing and no puffing up. Yesterday, the second time she crawled out of her tree she was in the same spot, but when I tried to pick her up she started hissing like crazy. I didn't stop trying to pick her up because I read if you stop when they hiss they will think they can do it all the time. After a couple terrible hisses Minerva went black and rigid and her eyes closed like she was dead. I thought I scared my chameleon to death! A couple minutes later she opened her eyes slightly and I picked her up and put her back in her original non free range cage. She looked very very weak when climbing back into her cage and this morning she is still asleep. She normally wakes up with the sun.

Can someone please tell me if free ranging will cause to much stress for my Cham?
Also, has anyone ever had their Cham play dead?
And can my chameleon have lasting damage from being so scarred?
Thanks for reading pics are attached of her free range cage

 

[Chachi]

Hi everyone. I've had my female veiled chameleon for about a year and a half now. I made her a free range tree to put in my room so she doesn't have to live her life in a cage. Both times I've put her on the tree she has climbed down and climbed behind my dresser with a bunch of cords behind it. I don't understand why she keeps trying to climb down (or how she got down because there was no path to the floor). I know she is not ready to lay another clutch of eggs, her last clutch was at the end of May. Ok so that's my first questions, why is she climbing out of the tree.

Ok so here is my next question the one I'm worried about. Ok so the first time she crawled out of her tree I found her and put her back. She got a little dark when I picked her up but no hissing and no puffing up. Yesterday, the second time she crawled out of her tree she was in the same spot, but when I tried to pick her up she started hissing like crazy. I didn't stop trying to pick her up because I read if you stop when they hiss they will think they can do it all the time. After a couple terrible hisses Minerva went black and rigid and her eyes closed like she was dead. I thought I scared my chameleon to death! A couple minutes later she opened her eyes slightly and I picked her up and put her back in her original non free range cage. She looked very very weak when climbing back into her cage and this morning she is still asleep. She normally wakes up with the sun.

Can someone please tell me if free ranging will cause to much stress for my Cham?
Also, has anyone ever had their Cham play dead?
And can my chameleon have lasting damage from being so scarred?
Thanks for reading pics are attached of her free range cage

Any way she could have eaten something? I had a cham who struck at a spider and it almost killed her.

 

[jajeanpierre]

Hi everyone. I've had my female veiled chameleon for about a year and a half now. I made her a free range tree to put in my room so she doesn't have to live her life in a cage. Both times I've put her on the tree she has climbed down and climbed behind my dresser with a bunch of cords behind it. I don't understand why she keeps trying to climb down (or how she got down because there was no path to the floor). I know she is not ready to lay another clutch of eggs, her last clutch was at the end of May. Ok so that's my first questions, why is she climbing out of the tree.

Ok so here is my next question the one I'm worried about. Ok so the first time she crawled out of her tree I found her and put her back. She got a little dark when I picked her up but no hissing and no puffing up. Yesterday, the second time she crawled out of her tree she was in the same spot, but when I tried to pick her up she started hissing like crazy. I didn't stop trying to pick her up because I read if you stop when they hiss they will think they can do it all the time. After a couple terrible hisses Minerva went black and rigid and her eyes closed like she was dead. I thought I scared my chameleon to death! A couple minutes later she opened her eyes slightly and I picked her up and put her back in her original non free range cage. She looked very very weak when climbing back into her cage and this morning she is still asleep. She normally wakes up with the sun.

Can someone please tell me if free ranging will cause to much stress for my Cham?
Also, has anyone ever had their Cham play dead?
And can my chameleon have lasting damage from being so scarred?
Thanks for reading pics are attached of her free range cage

From your picture, it looks like she can climb down very easily either directly to the ground or to some wires or the leg of the shelf.

You write:
"...when I tried to pick her up she started hissing like crazy. I didn't stop trying to pick her up because I read if you stop when they hiss they will think they can do it all the time."

Your paradigm on her hissing behavior is flawed. Chameleons simply react. She isn't learning that she can hiss at you since she already had that defense strategy the day she hatched, and she will always use that behavior when she feels it appropriate. It is your job to set up your interactions with her so she doesn't ever feel so threatened she needs to pull that tool--the hissing/biting tool--out of her behavior/strategy tool box and use it. Like all things in life, practice makes perfect; and her responding to you as a threat will become her immediate response to you and hard wired into her brain if you continue on when she is so upset. You picking her up when she is so upset only further ingrains that behavior--hissing--into her response to you.

From your description, I take that for some reason she was incredibly stressed by your picking her up and had a rather typical collapse of a highly stressed chameleon. An animal with an underlying health issue will collapse from stress quite easily. I've had to medicate and force feed desperately ill chameleons and have worried that the stress of my intervention would in fact kill them. Some have taken a few hours to recover from the stress but never overnight and these were desperately ill animals.

I've also noticed that ill chameleons will blanch very easily when stressed even if not handled. Blanching is a sign of stress. The same chameleon when healthy will not blanch.

I've handled chameleons that wanted no part of it and when put back in the cage were so upset that they've thrashed around and thrown themselves off their perches and then thrashed around on the floor of their cage. Sometimes putting them back in their cage has been a challenge to get them back in and settled without them hurting themselves as they flail around. That is not the same as you describe. You describe a physical collapse which suggests an underlying health issue.

Based on your description, there might be a health issue compromising her.

 

[angienminerva]

From your picture, it looks like she can climb down very easily either directly to the ground or to some wires or the leg of the shelf.

You write:
"...when I tried to pick her up she started hissing like crazy. I didn't stop trying to pick her up because I read if you stop when they hiss they will think they can do it all the time."

Your paradigm on her hissing behavior is flawed. Chameleons simply react. She isn't learning that she can hiss at you since she already had that defense strategy the day she hatched, and she will always use that behavior when she feels it appropriate. It is your job to set up your interactions with her so she doesn't ever feel so threatened she needs to pull that tool--the hissing/biting tool--out of her behavior/strategy tool box and use it. Like all things in life, practice makes perfect; and her responding to you as a threat will become her immediate response to you and hard wired into her brain if you continue on when she is so upset. You picking her up when she is so upset only further ingrains that behavior--hissing--into her response to you.

From your description, I take that for some reason she was incredibly stressed by your picking her up and had a rather typical collapse of a highly stressed chameleon. An animal with an underlying health issue will collapse from stress quite easily. I've had to medicate and force feed desperately ill chameleons and have worried that the stress of my intervention would in fact kill them. Some have taken a few hours to recover from the stress but never overnight and these were desperately ill animals.

I've also noticed that ill chameleons will blanch very easily when stressed even if not handled. Blanching is a sign of stress. The same chameleon when healthy will not blanch.

I've handled chameleons that wanted no part of it and when put back in the cage were so upset that they've thrashed around and thrown themselves off their perches and then thrashed around on the floor of their cage. Sometimes putting them back in their cage has been a challenge to get them back in and settled without them hurting themselves as they flail around. That is not the same as you describe. You describe a physical collapse which suggests an underlying health issue.

Based on your description, there might be a health issue compromising her.

Thanks for your reply. I will get Minerva to a vet asap

 

[angienminerva]

Thanks for your reply. I will get Minerva to a vet asap

I do have one more question for you, would a pregnant chameleon act this way? You said only unhealthy chameleons do this because of stress but if she had eggs in her would she do the same thing?

 

[angienminerva]

Any way she could have eaten something? I had a cham who struck at a spider and it almost killed her.

Oh my gosh! I'm glad your Cham is ok, what kind of spider? How did you find out that's what happened?

 

[Klaudiemo]

When females are pregnant, they get stressed very easily. They have good reasons. Few of my females are aggressive as well when pregnant. I suspect you don't have any male, so she is not. But she might want to lay eggs. This is among the most stressful times for females. It may be the reason, why is she climbing on the floor. She is probably searching for a safe place to lay her eggs.

 

[kinyonga]

Please post a couple of recent photos of your chameleon.

 

[angienminerva]

When females are pregnant, they get stressed very easily. They have good reasons. Few of my females are aggressive as well when pregnant. I suspect you don't have any male, so she is not. But she might want to lay eggs. This is among the most stressful times for females. It may be the reason, why is she climbing on the floor. She is probably searching for a safe place to lay her eggs.[/

Please post a couple of recent photos of your chameleon.

Ok so now I'm freaking out, her leg looks broken and it didn't look this way this morning, her colors are super dull.