complete English translation

The Animal With No Name

drawings by julie lamberson and story by guillaume varet

1
In the middle of a prairie of wild grasses lived an animal with no name and no friends.

2
The animal with no name had no one to play with.  No one to talk with.  No one.  No one.  No one.

3
He had never met the other inhabitants of the wild grasses.  That, in fact, was the reason he didn’t have any friends.  And he was bored a lot.  A whole lot.  So he spent all his time sleeping in his little house.

4
The animal with no name didn’t get up until the sun was very high in the sky, and the heat stifled all signs of life.  Silence reigned then over the prairie of wild grasses, because all the other inhabitants were taking their naps.

5
The birds took refuge in their nests in the shade of the leaves.

6
The insects hid under the grasses and let themselves be rocked by the wind.

7
The grass runners buried themselves deep in the ground, there where the heat hesitated to venture.

8
The prairie of wild grasses was full of drowsiness then and empty of friends for the animal with no name.  And he believed himself to be alone.

9
One day, however, as he ventured his snout into the bright daytime sun, he discovered an enormous wooden box.

10
Observing it more closely, he saw a lock without any key.  What could be inside?

11
The animal with no name pushed, pulled, bit, blew in the keyhole… but nothing worked, the box didn’t open.

12
Where could this box have come from, anyway?  He looked all around him, trying to see if maybe a box tree hadn’t grown up during the night.  But there wasn’t any new tree!  Someone had put it there, then.

If there was a friend somewhere in the prairie of wild grasses, he wanted to meet them.

13
To find out if the box was empty, the animal with no name knocked softly on the wood.

And the box opened.

14
Inside the box, he found a drawing.  And at the bottom of the drawing, someone had written:

WHO ARE YOU?

15
The heart of the animal with no name started to beat very fast.  He didn’t feel like sleeping any more at all.  He felt like answering his friend.  But how to answer them?

Suddenly he had an idea.

16
He seized the drawing again and on the back he wrote, “I am an animal with no name.” Then he put the paper back in the box, and so as not to frighten his very first friend, he hid in the wild grasses.

17
The animal with no name waited a little.  But the more he waited, the more he thought that he would like to know his friend’s name.  He went back up to the box, knocked again and the box opened.  But the drawing wasn’t there!

18
In its place, there were lots of little pebbles.  The little pebbles formed letters, which in their turn formed words, which spelled out

“I’LL CALL YOU BAMASHA OF THE DAY”

19
Bamasha of the Day looked at the pebbles, looked at the grasses, looked at the clouds, and smiled.  He said to himself “What a pretty name, ‘Bamasha of the Day’,” and he cried out as loud as he could

“Who are you?”

20
And the cry carried all across the prairie of wild grasses.  The birds, the insects, the grass runners… they all woke up.

21
They all ran to the box to see who had shouted.  And there, in the wild grasses, they discovered two new friends:  Bamasha of the Day and Saloma of the Box.

22
These days, Bamasha of the Day doesn’t get bored anymore.  He spends his time running in the grasses with his new friends.

He’s moved house, too: now he lives with Saloma in a box always open for anyone who wants to stop by…