Just had to post this one. This guy’s been rockin’ the kerchief for a couple of weeks now, I think…
This is in the greenhouse, specifically on the foxglove plant that he seems to really like, since I’ve found him there (and scared him off while watering said plant) numerous times. In fact, several days ago when it was quite warm and I’d left the greenhouse door open for air, I found him not too far outside on the lawn, and recognized him from his kerchief since I’d seen it multiple times before; I figured he’d be happier in the greenhouse and shooed him back inside with surprisingly little trouble. Of course, when I went out later on with the camera, he was nowhere to be found. Spotting him again today, I made sure to get pics.
This is, naturally, evidence of a fairly recent shed, only he’s never managed to dislodge it completely and possibly has no motivation to, since it’s about as out-of-the-way as it can be. But I noticed something odd in the old skin, shown here, an oval pattern which didn’t seem to fit. Now, if it were a snake, I’d say this was an eyecup, since snakes shed their eye coverings with the rest of their skin, but anoles don’t do that. Ear, perhaps? No, that’s an opening too and should only be a hole in the skin. Then piecing things together along that spinal ‘seam,’ I realized it was probably from the parietal eye (I’d always called it the pineal eye, another term for it but apparently not the preferred one,) which is a simple light-sensing organ centered nicely on top of the skull, not in focus in the image below but sitting just opposite in the frame, in between the grey areas just aft of the proper eyes:
By the way, this one is so used to me now that he barely responds when I enter, even when I’m walking back and forth – though as I said, he doesn’t appreciate water crashing into the pot that he’s snoozing within.