When I was in Austin about a month ago, I ran into an old acquaintance… kinda-sorta. I was having a glass of wine at the Hyatt Regency’s outdoor bar when, out of the corner of my eye, I recognized someone I haven’t seen since I left Texas over a decade ago. Actually, I found it hard not to notice, since he was doing push-ups against the patio railing, but the other hotel guests seemed oblivious. As he moved closer to my table I turned to face him, thinking, “Typical attention-seeking anole.”

green anole changing colorA green anole (Anolis carolinensis), to be exact, although he has a number of aliases including Carolina anole, American anole, and red-throated anole, not to mention tree lion. I’ve also heard people say he’s a chameleon. Trust me, he’s not. Oh, he can change color alright, within a limited green-to-brown range… mostly when he wants to fade into the background or broadcast to everyone that he’s stressed, cold, or generally displeased. But while he does have roving eyes, they don’t move independently of one another.

When I say “he” I don’t mean it in the gender-neutral pronoun way—I’m certain this particular reptile was a male. Why? Because he would periodically take a break from pumping up to flair the strawberry-hued flap of skin on his neck called a dewlap. It’s the anole equivalent of “hey, baby… can I buy you a drink?” Or throwing up gang signs to claim a corner. A dewlap is dual-purpose.

Or maybe it’s really all one and the same. In the anole world, you’ve got to own property to be a playah. A male’s territory overlaps those of multiple females. Green anoles are polygynous, meaning a guy will wander through his ‘hood flashing throat bling and making social calls. The little women, on the other hand, stay pretty close to the homestead, waiting for their man to come around. It’s basically polygamy, but for any number of irrational reasons, people prefer to use different terminology for analogous human and non-human behavior.

Warming temperatures raise lizard libidos so, depending on the local climate, the party starts sometime in April and doesn’t wind down until late August/early September. Courtship is simple and not all that subtle. Once a male’s bobbing head and dewlap have caught a female’s attention, she lets him know she’s in the mood by arching her neck… which he subsequently bites from behind. Understandably, this can cause her to reconsider her level of receptivity so he has to hold on tight. I guess all that upper-body work has a purpose beyond posing after all.

The encounter lasts a minute or two and then they go their separate ways, at least for a couple of weeks. She lays a clutch of 6–9 eggs that take 5–7 weeks to hatch. Neither parent gets involved in child-rearing. What can you expect? Young anoles grow up fast and are having babies of their own at 8–9 months of age.

Back on the patio. I said hello, asked how he’s been, the usual awkward pleasantries that pass between acquaintances who’ve not seen each other in a long while. As I remember he never was much of a talker but he seemed particularly distracted that afternoon. A quick glance around and I understood why. I cut my conversation with this lounge lizard short once I realized he looking past me at a couple of slender green ladies who were checking him out.

Typical.

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© 2011 Next-Door Nature— no reprints without written permission from the author. Thanks to the following photographers for making their work available for use through Creative Commons License:  Ken Slade, Alex Calderon, and GalgenTX .