A neck snaps open along its length like a changepurse. In silent clatter, a pink throat tumbles out. It briefly throbs, then retracts into the dark. The purse snaps shut. A body organ’s deployment has been instantaneously registered by the office of sun. The body’s affects have been abruptness and disdain.

And now, as the shadow darkens under her leaf, her fashion has begun changing in haste from green to brown. Anole carolinensis is acquiring a past and becoming a fable.  From her shade she chirps its fleshy moral. What she chirps is that even at the instant when she snapped open her body to its first dark breath, she knew all along.