美語情景對話 第464期:The Chameleon 變色龍
Todd: Carla, you said you have a chameleon story?
託德：卡拉，你說過你有個關於變色龍的故事？Carla: Yeah.
卡拉：對。Todd: Actually first of all, just for the listeners, what is a chameleon.
託德：實際上首先我要幫聽衆問一句，什麼是變色龍？
Carla: I was going to tell you what that is. A chameleon is an animal that can change its' colour depending on where it is. So if you put it on a black book, for example, it'll turn very dark. If you put it in a light place, it'll go bright bright green. It could go spotty yellow and green. And the other thing that's interesting about it is that it's eyes can move in two different directions. So it's right eye can look forwards and it's left eye can look backwards. So if you stand on one side of it and wiggle your hand around, one eye will look towards the back and the other eye will look towards the front. And it also has a long long tongue so it zaps its tongue out to catch a fly. Anyway, we found this chameleon, and we took it into our house. And we had it for about, I think maybe two weeks. And we had an electrical chord, that went from our refrigerator, up the wall, into the ceiling above up to the electrical box in the roof space. And this chameleon spent two weeks crawling up the chord getting to the ceiling and dropping off. And crawling up the chord and getting to the ceiling and dropping off. But every once in a while we would, I took it into the classroom sometimes and we would kind of play with it because we liked to, it was a good biology experiment…
卡拉：我會告訴你的。變色龍是一種可以根據周圍環境改變顏色的動物。舉例來說，如果你把它放在一本黑色的書上面，它就會變成黑色。如果你把它放在亮的地方，它就會變成亮綠色。它還可以變出黃色和綠色的斑點。還有一件有趣的事，它的眼睛可以往兩個不同的方向移動。它可以右眼往前看，而左眼往後看。所以如果你站在它的一側揮手，它的一隻眼睛會往後看，而另一隻眼睛會往前看。它的舌頭非常長，所以它可以吐出舌頭抓蒼蠅。我們發現了一隻變色龍，然後把它帶回了家。我們大概養了兩個星期。我們有一個電子弦，從冰箱順着牆，越過電子盒一直延伸至房頂。這隻變色龍兩星期以來一直順着這根弦爬到屋頂然後再爬下來。它就這樣一直沿着弦爬上屋頂再爬下來。我偶爾會帶它去教室，我們會和它一起玩，因爲這是一個很棒的生物實驗……Todd: Yeah.
託德：是啊。Carla: …to put different colours of things around it and see what colour it would turn into. Then after a while we let the poor little thing go.
卡拉：把它放在不同顏色的背景下，看它會變成什麼顏色。之後我們會讓這個可憐的小傢伙自己待着。Todd: So it didn't mind you picking it up and taking it?
託德：所以它不介意你把它拿起來帶它去別的地方嗎？Carla: Actually, it did mind because if you picked it up by about half way… three quarters of the way down it's back, that was safest because it can't swing its upper body around. But it would turn around and hiss at you.
卡拉：實際上它很介意，如果你把手放在大概一半……放在它後背大概四分之三的地方舉起它，那是最安全的，因爲它沒法把上半身轉過來。不過它會把頭轉過來衝你發出嘶嘶的聲音。Todd: Oh, wow.
託德：哦，哇。Carla: So you, the first time I just dropped it cause it was scary. And the second time I realised that's about as scary as it got so. That was it.
卡拉：所以第一次的時候我馬上就把它放下了，因爲我太害怕了。不過第二次我就意識到它也一樣害怕。就是這樣。
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重點講解：
1. first of all
第一；首先；
eg. First of all,let's see where we agree and disagree.
首先，我們來看看我們的共同點和不同點在什麼地方。
eg. First of all we must identify the problem areas.
首先我們必須找出問題所在。
2. once in a while
偶爾；間或；
eg. We go to the park for a picnic once in a while.
我們有時去公園野餐。
eg. Everyone needs to be bolstered up once in a while.
每個人都時不時的需要些鼓勵。
3. turn into
（使）變成；（使）成爲；
eg. Long-time blankness will turn into blindness.
茫然得太久就成了盲目。
eg. Guy has turned into a really hard case since he's been in prison.
蓋伊自從進了監獄後，已變成一個實在不可救藥的人了。
