King Chameleon and the Animals

Long ago all the animals in the world lived together as friends. But they had no one to rule over them and settle their quarrels, and because nobody feared punishment, a great many wicked things were done.

At last they all met to talk about this sorry state of affairs, and they decided to choose a king. The hard part was deciding how to choose him.

Lion was suggested first, but everyone objected because he was too fierce. Wolf was named next, but the sheep and goats would not have him, since he was their enemy and they knew he would treat them badly.

Because no single choice could please everyone, they agreed to decide another way. Two miles off stood a great stool beneath a very old tree, which they believed was the home of some of their gods. They would hold a race, and whichever animal reached the stool first and sat down on it would be king.

The day of the race came, and every animal, large and small, got ready to run. When the signal was given, they all set off. The hare was a splendid runner and soon left everyone behind. He reached the stool a good five hundred yards ahead of the next animal.

You can imagine how cross he was when, just as he was about to sit down, a voice came from the stool: “Careful, Mr Hare, careful. I got here first.”

It was the chameleon. In this tale Chameleon can match the hare’s colour perfectly, and he had grabbed hold of Mr Hare’s tail the moment the race began. He had made himself the same colour as the hare, so nobody had noticed him. He had clung on tightly all the way, and when the hare turned round to sit down, Chameleon let go and dropped onto the stool.

The hare saw through the trick and was furious, but the other animals came up in time to stop him hurting the chameleon. They had all agreed to the rules of the race, so they had no choice but to make Chameleon king.

None of the animals was happy with the result, though. As soon as the meeting ended, they all scattered in every direction and left Chameleon completely alone.

He was so ashamed that he went to live at the top of a very tall tree on a mountain. The tale imagines him calling in the dead of night for his attendants to come and stay with him. But they never come. “A king without subjects is no king.”

About this telling

“King Chameleon and the Animals” is story XXX in Barker and Sinclair’s West African Folk-Tales (1917). It closes on a proverb in quotation marks, “A king without subjects is no king,” and on the image of the chameleon calling alone at night from his treetop.

The race to a sacred stool beneath an old tree, believed to be the home of gods, is how the book frames the contest. Barker notes that many non-Anansi tales from the Gold Coast explain the habits of creatures, as this one imaginatively does for Chameleon’s solitude; it is not a zoological account.

Read the original: West African Folk-Tales (1917), free at Project Gutenberg

Best for ages 6–8 — a short race story with a sneaky winner and a thoughtful proverb at the end.

Winning a test that does not test leadership

The animals reject strength because Lion and Wolf might misuse it, but replace that problem with a speed contest. Speed also says little about fair judgment. Chameleon reaches the stool first while violating the trust behind the race, and the other animals can obey the result formally while refusing to be his subjects.

Design a different selection task that would reveal how a candidate settles a quarrel. Then compare what your test measures with what the race measures. The empty kingdom makes the final proverb concrete: possession of the stool is not the same as willing cooperation.

Talk about it

• Why didn’t the animals want Lion or Wolf as their king?
• How did the chameleon win the race?
• What do you think “A king without subjects is no king” means?

More stories like this

• Quarcoo Bah-Boni — more animals who scatter to different homes
• The Dance for Water, or Rabbit’s Triumph — a tortoise and a hare outwit bigger animals