Last week when I got home one afternoon, I had a little visitor to greet me. This little female green anole (Anolis carolinensis) was hanging out on my front gate. Normally, when they are out there, it is to bask in the sun, but lately it has been so hot that even the anoles don’t want to be in the direct afternoon sunlight. Instead, she was hunting for flies and other small insects for her dinner. She had been on the old wooden fence stalking something when I drove up and was mostly in the brown phase. As I approached her, she started to run into the summer grape vines that are draped over the fence. I guess curiosity got the best of her, though, because she didn’t go far before stopping to watch me approach her. She watched me cautiously, but stayed put. She was surrounded by green vine leaves and branches, but on the dark wood, and I was lucky enough to catch her part way between the two color phases. Keep in mind, these guys don’t change color super quickly like some types of chameleons do, but still, it was interesting to find her between the two phases. She had actually probably been in this transitional range for awhile as she moved back and forth between the fence and vines. Still, at least in my experience, anoles between color phases are not something that you see all the time.