With the world having plunged in utter chaos, looking at those pictures taken in the Constantia garden in February 2020 B.C. (Before COVID) makes me smile. They are such a good antidote to stress and worry. Boy George is right—they come and go—but I have yet to fail finding at least one chameleon, on any given trip to Cape Town, somewhere in the garden or the adjacent green belt.

Meeleon

These are photos of the same specimen hanging out in a tree at the bottom of the garden, over multiple days. Any garden chameleon is automatically named Meeleon.

Oblivious to anything but the present, forgetting what it did a moment ago and unaware that more moments are coming, it shies away from the camera and goes on with its slow unimaginative business.

Creep, eat, sleep, repeat. Sounds like us these days, except for the imagination, which can be a plague.