The Chameleon Puppet

By Olivia J.

The chameleon puppet we created for the Clarke County Christmas Parade was

amazing, but it didn’t start out that way. It used to be just a drawing made by one of the high

schoolers. The drawing was of a big chameleon with a curly tail, four movable legs, and a

shootable tongue.

The art and design students worked together to make this thing look like a chameleon.

We started by making a skeleton and draping big, spray-painted pieces of fabric over the it, but

we still had another challenge to tackle. The head.

The head is probably the most complicated part of the entire puppet. The design

involved a jaw that could open to allow the tongue to shoot out. We figured out the jaw rather

quickly, but the tongue was a different story. We troubleshot for a while and eventually

stumbled upon a design. The jaw would be opened by the first person in the head, and then the

second person would launch the tongue and then reel it back in with the rope that was

attached.

The tail and legs were the next part of the challenge. The tail was attached to a

backpack put on by Ms. Sarah. “The parade was so fun!” she said, “I danced the whole way

down so the tail would shake.” The legs were attached at the very end of the building process.

Attaching the leg parts together wasn’t easy, but we figured it out. They ended up being held

together with zip-ties and moved by four kids.

Now for the parade. It was on a cold December day, there was a lot of people around to

see our puppet as we walked down Main Street. “The parade was alright,” said a middle

schooler named Silas, “we got to throw candy at people.” We had a bunch of kids running

around giving out candy to people, as well as a bunch of adults.

As for plans of the future, the possibilities are endless. “It would be fun to do another

one,” stated high schooler Ash. So, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.