The Camel Who Believed in Fair Turns

A lion, a jackal, a crow, and a camel traveled together as companions, the camel having joined the group innocently after the others rescued him from a thicket, not realizing the other three were bound by very different loyalties than his own. When a lean season left them all starving with the lion too weak to hunt properly, the jackal proposed a solution: each of them would, in turn, offer himself as food for the others, and whoever's offer was accepted would be sacrificed for the good of the group.

The crow went first, offering himself dramatically — and was immediately refused by the others as "too small to satisfy anyone." The jackal offered next, also refused as "too thin and unworthy a meal for a king." The lion himself made a show of offering his own life next, and was of course refused most emphatically of all by his devoted followers, who insisted their king's life was far too precious to lose.

The camel, trusting completely in this apparent ritual of mutual respect and having watched three genuine-seeming offers all be refused in turn, offered himself last, confident he too would be turned down out of the same fairness he had just witnessed. He was not refused. The lion, jackal, and crow had orchestrated the entire ritual precisely to arrive at this outcome, each of their own "offers" designed from the start to be declined, while the camel's trusting sincerity was the only one ever meant to be accepted. A rigged ritual of fairness, performed convincingly enough times in a row, can make even the wisest creature mistake a trap for a genuine turn.