Yertle the Turtle™

Yertle the Turtle rules all that he can see—a nice little pond on the island of Sala-ma-Sond.  But that’s not enough.  “If I could sit high, how much greater I’d be!” the greedy king declares in Dr. Seuss’s Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories.  Yertle commands his unhappy subjects to stand upon one another, building a “throne” that reaches to the sky.  Only a burp from Mack, the bottommost turtle, brings his rule to a splashing end.