Читать книгу Our Silver Pond - Валерий Жиглов, Valeriy Zhiglov - Страница 2

After I completed my third year in a school, my father allowed me to join him in a geological expedition for the whole summer.

By the end of August, someone brought many good melons to our tent camp. It was a hot noon, the Sun was merciless, no wind at all, no wish to eat at all, but for some reason everybody wanted to taste a good melon.

It did not take long for a small hill of watermelon rind to appear not far from our tent camp. It took even less for multiple insects to learn there was some delicious food around. Lizards started hunting those insects, which lizards like even more, than the insects like watermelon rind.

The most interesting was the lizards, which are also known as chameleons, named so for their ability to change the color of the skin depending on the background.

For example, a chameleon lizard climbed the watermelon rind and its skin became the strip of green, thus making the lizard absolutely unnoticeable. Then it moved a little, a half of the background became red, and so did the half of the lizard’s body: the lizard became half-red.

If we did not trace the lizard’s movements, we would hardly even notice it on the watermelon rind hill. In addition, should there be the minimum danger for a lizard, the lizard immediately ran away to disappear amidst the rare plants burnt by the Sun.

Somehow, a young and quick member of the expedition did catch this amazing lizard. Because the time for lunch was almost over, and the entire team had to take yet another route, the young member, without thinking long, put the chameleon inside his sleeping bag, and zipped its top to leave no space for escape.

Tonight, he totally forgot about his daytime finding, because sunrays exhausted him. He had some dinner and went to sleep, because a new route, the same hard as the previous, was pending for tomorrow. As soon as he got undressed and put his legs into the sleeping bag, something really cold, and even as slippery as a snake, ran on the skin of his leg towards his torso!

Surprised, he raised both legs and hit the foldable bed, on which his sleeping bag was, with full his force. He also cried very loud. Whatever of these two actions broke the bed into pieces, was not so important, because the broken bed collapsed anyway, as we all were running to help. We saw the poor man lying on the floor next to the broken bed.

This helped him to remember the daytime finding, and it also vitalized him for looking for the lizard in his sleeping bag. Apparently, the chameleon, however, was neither stupid, nor slow, it chose not to wait for what might happen next, and it simply ran away to the wild. Our hero got a job for the entire night. He had to repair the broken bed in the light of a pocket lamp.