英语访谈对话 514 The Chameleon

 　　Todd: Carla, you said you have a chameleon¹ story?

　　Carla: Yeah.

　　Todd: Actually first of all, just for the listeners², what is a chameleon.

　　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 backwards³. 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 chord⁴, that went from our refrigerator, up the wall, into the ceiling⁵ above up to the electrical box in the roof space. And this chameleon spent two weeks crawling⁶ 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 …

　　Todd: Yeah.

　　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.

　　Todd: So it didn't mind you picking it up and taking it?

　　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 hiss⁷ at you.

　　Todd: Oh, wow.

　　Carla: So you, the first time I just dropped it cause it was scary⁸. And the second time I realised that's about as scary as it got so. That was it.

1 chameleon   

n.变色龙，蜥蜴；善变之人

参考例句：

• The chameleon changes colour to match its surroundings.变色龙变换颜色以适应环境。
• The chameleon can take on the colour of its background.变色龙可呈现出与其背景相同的颜色。

2 listeners   

n.倾听者，收听者( listener的名词复数 )；听众

参考例句：

• the demographics of radio listeners 电台听众统计数据
• The singer's high notes jarred on the ears of her listeners. 那位歌手的高音让听众们觉得刺耳。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 backwards   

adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地

参考例句：

• He turned on the light and began to pace backwards and forwards.他打开电灯并开始走来走去。
• All the girls fell over backwards to get the party ready.姑娘们迫不及待地为聚会做准备。

4 chord   

n.和弦，和音，弦，心弦

参考例句：

• Her speech struck a deep chord in my heart.她的话深深地拨动了我的心弦。
• This is a chord of a circle.这是个圆的弦。

5 ceiling   

n.天花板；(规定价格、工资等的)最高限额

参考例句：

• It took more or less a whole day to paint the ceiling.粉刷天花板用了将近一整天的时间。
• A fly is on the ceiling.一只苍蝇在天花板上。

6 crawling   

n.表面涂布不均v.爬( crawl的现在分词 )；（昆虫）爬行；缓慢行进；巴结

参考例句：

• You should be ashamed of yourself, crawling to the director like that. 你那样巴结董事，应该感到羞耻。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Stubborn, self-confident Guo Zhenshan has never gone crawling to anyone. 坚强、自信、有气魄的郭振山，实在说，永远也不会向人低三下四啊！ 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

7 hiss   

v.发出嘶嘶声；发嘘声表示不满

参考例句：

• We can hear the hiss of air escaping from a tire.我们能听到一只轮胎的嘶嘶漏气声。
• Don't hiss at the speaker.不要嘘演讲人。

8 scary   

a.引起惊慌的；害怕的

参考例句：

• What animal do you think is the most scary?你认为什么动物最可怕？
• Are you afraid of scary movies?你害怕恐怖电影吗？