Ethiopian Folktales

Narrator Unknown

The crane gave birth in a tree and when the fox knew he said, “You crane! If you don’t give me one of your chicks I’ll cut down the tree and eat you all.”

So the crane gave him a chick. One by one the chicks went. Then a vulture came and he saw there were only a few chicks left.

He asked her why are they decreasing. So she told him about the fox.

He said, “The fox has no axe. He can’t cut down trees.”

“Is that right?”

So when the fox comes again, the crane says, “Go ahead and cut down the tree.”

“Who told you my secret?”

“No one. I knew it myself.”

“It must be the vulture,” said the fox.

When the fox went he sat down in the road wearing a donkey’s placenta and the vulture saw and thought it was meat and he sat on the fox. So the fox caught him.

The vulture says, “Please don’t throw me into a barrel of cereals, whatever you do.”

So the fox put him in a barrel of cereal and he ate all the cereal and was so satisfied he slept. When the fox came back he thought he was dead and caught him.

“Please,” said the vulture, “do what you like, but don’t throw me in the forest with the barrel.”

The fox did so and he ran with him to catch him and the barrel rolled over the fox and killed him.