Summer time has just knocked at our door step and our evidence being the sighting of a male Tree Agama (Agama atricollis) with a bright blue colour covering its head. Stopping and observing this creature whilst it is doing its body sign language ie. press ups or even circling around tree trunks leaves you wondering. The natural colour of an Agama usually blends with its surroundings and during their breeding seasons which is shortly before summer rains thats when males develop an eye catching colour.


For those of you who believe in tribal faith like myself tend to worry that this beautiful creature is going to attract lightening. If seen nearby our homesteads it is killed or one is always advised not to stand underneath a tree where an Agama resides when it is raining. Destroying the creature by the local people tends to relieve us of the fear that if you are bewitched with the properties of a tree Agama you'll never heal up. When someone who has been bewitched falls sick, the cure is sought after and usually soon after healing something else develops and it always goes on and off until you die.


The fact behind is that when an Agama is spotted on a tree trunk it moves from one side to the other avoiding contact and this theory has developed hatred between the local people and an Agama, not forgeting its bright blue colour which outlines its surroundings that has also lead to the belief that the bright colour attracts lightening as well as when it lifts its head up and down.

Truman Ndlovu - Field Guide