As we're just about at Halloweeen, I think this is a good story to post. Not every traditional fairy tale ends in happily ever after....
Warning: This may not be appropriate for all ages; parental discretion is advised.
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THE LITTLE WOLF THAT CRIED "PEOPLE!"
Once upon a time there was a small pack of timber wolves roaming in the territory their kind have always known as home. At this point in time, their numbers had dwindled to a small pack of indeed and into this pack was born one of the smallest wolves they had ever seen. Though small, he did have a very keen nose and sharp eyes. While he would never be the hunter his father is and would always be low wolf in the pack hierarchy, they did find his gifts useful.
When it had been determined that he was grown enough and had learned all that the pack could teach him, he was granted the responsibility to watch over the pack as it slept during the daytime. At first, the little wolf took this responsibility very seriously. And much occurred during the day that he would tell the others about in the cool evening twilight before he himself would get a few hours of rest. For you see, during the daytime there were other animals awake and active. Even more fascinating were the people and the many curious items they brought with them into the wolves' territory.
One twilight, the little wolf told the others of the pack, “I saw people today. They came nearby on the flat rock-river in a large container that roared and chugged something fierce. Then the container stopped and sighed itself to silence. The sides of the container opened and people came out. There were four of them, male and female from the scents. Their scents didn’t even match each other, so they may have been from different packs. In their forepaws they carried these little silver items with something that looked like a dead fish’s eye. They pointed the eye at me and there was a brilliant flash of bright light. The females made some soft pleased noises and the males nodded their heads. Then they all got back into the container. The container sprang back to life with a ear-splitting roar and a horribly bad-smelling plume from its hindquarters. Then they continued on their way down the rock-river.”
The wolf pups loved to hear his stories of what occurred during the day. The elder wolves would smile knowingly and tell him about what he had seen. No matter what new story he would bring to the pack each twilight, the wolf pups ate it up with the evening meal and the elder wolves would tell him it’s been seen before. “Just once,” the little wolf thought to himself, “I would like to tell a tale about people where the elder wolves would be in as much awe as the pups.” Some nights, he would lie there thinking about what he could say, instead of getting the rest he needed. And one night, while listening to the melodic howling of his pack and the echoing sounds of the reply from a distant pack he came up with a story.
A few nights after that, he padded down from the hilltop where he lay watching the surrounding area during the day. His eyes were bright with mischief. “Listen all,” he barked, “I have seen something never seen before.”
All heads turned as one in his direction and he was met with the cool knowing lupine gazes of the elders as well as the wonder in the pups’ eyes.
The little wolf faced the pack and dropped to his hindquarters, his forelegs straight so he could meet all the wolves nose to nose if not eye to eye – after all, he was still a low wolf in this pack. “The people are invading!” he blurted out.
The elder wolves exchanged worried glances and the pack leader asked the little wolf, “How do you know this?”
The little wolf puffed up his chest with false pride. “I have seen them. They come while you are all asleep during the day. They carry new things and bigger containers. They have come to take our territory and make it their home.”
The little pups yelped in fear and ran to their mothers, hiding among their legs. The pack leader and elder wolves exchanged thoughts in the silent lupine body language known their kind. Then the pack leader turned back to the little wolf and nipped him on the muzzle. “Little fool!” he growled. “If this is so, you should have awakened us immediately so we can defend our territory.”
“B- B- But it was daytime,” yelped the little wolf.
“Are we afraid of the sun? Are we afraid of people? No matter what they bring into our territory, we will defend our home!”
As the high wolves nipped and growled at the little wolf, he promised that should this occur again, he would wake the others. Quickly he dropped to the ground and rolled onto his back, acknowledging his place in the pack.
Day by day, his humiliation before the pack ate at the little wolf's inside. Now even the young pups ridiculed him for his actions. Things didn’t change much and the novelty of the daytime events wore away. “This task is boring,” thought the little wolf, “and I’m never going to get any recognition in my pack.
Days turned into months, and the moon flowed through its changes time and again. Game moved to the south and the winter snows followed. One day, the little wolf got an idea as he noted that the people and their containers also left tracks in the snow. On a particularly boring day, the little wolf waited until he was sure the pack was deep in sleep. Then he lifted his chin and howled for all his worth!
Immediately the pack was awake and came running up the hill to the vantage point where the little wolf stood perched with hackles up. “What is the danger?” asked the pack leader immediately, fangs bared and ready.
The little wolf pointed with his nose and ears in the direction of the rock-river. People had come again to invade our territory. I scared them away with my growl. You can see their tracks in the snow. They are gone now. But because you required it of me, I awakened you with my howl.
The pack leader approached the little wolf, and the little wolf’s ears swiveled, fearing he was about to get bitten on the muzzle for doing wrong again. Instead the pack leader just placed his jaws lightly over the little wolfs nose, letting the little wolf know that he was still the low wolf but had done the right thing. The little wolf licked the pack leader’s muzzle in gratitude.
The pups also came up to him, pride shining in their small faces and they actually licked the low wolf’s muzzle. That show made the little wolf’s heart glow warm with pride. “I must do this again,” he thought to himself. “Even though the people will never invade as I have made that story up, the pack will give me a little more respect each time and I will rise in the ranks.”
The little wolf waited through another dance of the moon’s cycle before he tried his plan again. On a particular brutish day with the winds howling their own fierce song and the driving snow stinging the nose, eyes and eartips, the little wolf tilted back his head and howled his message to the others of his pack.
They were slower to arrive to the hilltop as the snow was deeper and the weather was dangerous with it’s hidden ice both beneath the white blanket and overlying the snow as a breakable crust that could cut the unwary paw. The pups, the little wolf noted, were left back in the winter dens where they were warm and safe.
The pack leader was the first to clear the hilltop and gazed around through the storm. “What did you see?” he growled to the little wolf.
“People tried to invade again.”
“In THIS weather?” growled the pack leader baring his sharp fangs at the little wolf.
“Th- They did! They came but they left when I chased them down toward the rock-road. You would see their tracks, but the blowing snow has covered them up.”
The pack leader chuffed in the little wolf’s direction and padded slowly and purposely toward the rock-road, sniffing as he went trying to detect the scents of man and his machines. Within the hour, the pack leader returned to the hilltop and faced the pack.
“I find little evidence to support our watcher’s story, but if people have indeed returned to invade our home after they were chased off the first time, we must warn the others.” As one voice, the wolf pack howled the message to the other packs and the message was passed from pack to pack all along the winter landscape. “Beware, people are invading.”
Shaken by the fact that the pack leader searched for evidence to his story, the little wolf decided he should be more careful the next time he tried his trick. Time passed again. Winter snows melted and the ground became muddy and bright green as the new growth pushed up from the warming ground toward the sun. The game moved north again, following the sun’s own journey to its summer home. And the little pups that once admired the little wolf were now members of the pack and hunters themselves and would often make the little wolf show his belly to them.
With the return of the warmer weather, the little wolf spied more people again. Now is the time for my trick. “Surely” he thought to himself, “I would not be the low wolf if I could get the pack leader to confirm my story of the invasion.”
So one day, he put his brilliant plan into action. When the people were still there, aiming the silver object with the dead fish eye at him, he tilted his head back and howled. Instantly, the others came running and charged the people.
Many of the people screamed and jumped into their containers. But one grabbed a thunder stick from the back of his container and pointed it at the charging wolves. The little wolf had never seen a thunder stick before, but when the crack of thunder and the flash of lightning issued from the stick, he knew what it was from the tales the elder wolves told him when he was a pup.
The little wolf felt the bite of the thunder stick across his right shoulder. The other wolves swiftly scattered but just as quickly reconverged when they realized the little wolf was injured. “Can you run?” the pack leader barked at him as others growled and hunkered themselves down between the little wolf and the thunder stick.
“Yes,” hissed the little wolf as he climbed to all four paws despite the pain.
“Then everyone back to the hilltop. We defend our territory, our pups and our home!”
As one, the wolves lumbered up the muddy hillside and turned to face the invaders. The one person outside the containers lowered the thunder stick back into the back of his container and stood next to the opening on one side of another container, talking to the people inside. Curiously, the wolves listened, but understood little.
The little wolf had better hearing than most of his pack, and had even learned to understand some of the people’s spoken language. But there was one word he did not understand that was mentioned again and again: “rabid.”
That night, the pack howled the message to the other wolf packs around their territory. A sad tale was also passed on to them, one of sickness. A sickness from the game had come into one wolf pack and made them go mad with thirst and mindlessness. They chased shadows and turned on friends and disregarded the pack order. People had come to this pack and now that pack is no more but vanished in one day.
The little wolves pack was shaken to their souls and they howled a sad lamentation for the pack that was no more. Afterwards, they worried about their own plight with the people. The new pups would be born soon and preparations had to be made to keep them safe.
A young but larger wolf was assigned to watch during the day with the little wolf. After what occurred, the little wolf decided it was time he stopped this trick. When he tried to rise in the pack order, all he got was a sore shoulder and someone that was assigned to the same duty, as if he were no longer worthy of even this position. A depression came upon the little wolf and he cared less and less about the activity around him during the day.
His companion, however, was ever curious, as this was all new to her and she would ask the little wolf many questions about what she saw. One day the young wolf spied people. The little wolf sniffed the air and confirmed, “Yes, that’s people.” He didn’t even raise his muzzle from the warm grass where he lay.
The young wolf rose on all four paws and barked, “They’re coming up the hill and they have thunder sticks.”
The little wolf’s ears shot up and he raised his head, but the moment was passed before he knew it. The roar of the thunder stick echoed off the distant hills as his young companion dropped beside him, a strange tube embedded in her throat.
The little wolf raised his muzzle to cry the warning and heard the thunder stick again. A hot jab of pain pierced his own throat and the world around him became a warm fuzzy blur. “It’s the sickness,” his panicked mind thought just before he drifted into it’s warm welcome. One last thought crossed his drifting mind as his chin touched down on the warm grass, “I never did issue the warning this time…..”
When it had been determined that he was grown enough and had learned all that the pack could teach him, he was granted the responsibility to watch over the pack as it slept during the daytime. At first, the little wolf took this responsibility very seriously. And much occurred during the day that he would tell the others about in the cool evening twilight before he himself would get a few hours of rest. For you see, during the daytime there were other animals awake and active. Even more fascinating were the people and the many curious items they brought with them into the wolves' territory.
One twilight, the little wolf told the others of the pack, “I saw people today. They came nearby on the flat rock-river in a large container that roared and chugged something fierce. Then the container stopped and sighed itself to silence. The sides of the container opened and people came out. There were four of them, male and female from the scents. Their scents didn’t even match each other, so they may have been from different packs. In their forepaws they carried these little silver items with something that looked like a dead fish’s eye. They pointed the eye at me and there was a brilliant flash of bright light. The females made some soft pleased noises and the males nodded their heads. Then they all got back into the container. The container sprang back to life with a ear-splitting roar and a horribly bad-smelling plume from its hindquarters. Then they continued on their way down the rock-river.”
The wolf pups loved to hear his stories of what occurred during the day. The elder wolves would smile knowingly and tell him about what he had seen. No matter what new story he would bring to the pack each twilight, the wolf pups ate it up with the evening meal and the elder wolves would tell him it’s been seen before. “Just once,” the little wolf thought to himself, “I would like to tell a tale about people where the elder wolves would be in as much awe as the pups.” Some nights, he would lie there thinking about what he could say, instead of getting the rest he needed. And one night, while listening to the melodic howling of his pack and the echoing sounds of the reply from a distant pack he came up with a story.
A few nights after that, he padded down from the hilltop where he lay watching the surrounding area during the day. His eyes were bright with mischief. “Listen all,” he barked, “I have seen something never seen before.”
All heads turned as one in his direction and he was met with the cool knowing lupine gazes of the elders as well as the wonder in the pups’ eyes.
The little wolf faced the pack and dropped to his hindquarters, his forelegs straight so he could meet all the wolves nose to nose if not eye to eye – after all, he was still a low wolf in this pack. “The people are invading!” he blurted out.
The elder wolves exchanged worried glances and the pack leader asked the little wolf, “How do you know this?”
The little wolf puffed up his chest with false pride. “I have seen them. They come while you are all asleep during the day. They carry new things and bigger containers. They have come to take our territory and make it their home.”
The little pups yelped in fear and ran to their mothers, hiding among their legs. The pack leader and elder wolves exchanged thoughts in the silent lupine body language known their kind. Then the pack leader turned back to the little wolf and nipped him on the muzzle. “Little fool!” he growled. “If this is so, you should have awakened us immediately so we can defend our territory.”
“B- B- But it was daytime,” yelped the little wolf.
“Are we afraid of the sun? Are we afraid of people? No matter what they bring into our territory, we will defend our home!”
As the high wolves nipped and growled at the little wolf, he promised that should this occur again, he would wake the others. Quickly he dropped to the ground and rolled onto his back, acknowledging his place in the pack.
Day by day, his humiliation before the pack ate at the little wolf's inside. Now even the young pups ridiculed him for his actions. Things didn’t change much and the novelty of the daytime events wore away. “This task is boring,” thought the little wolf, “and I’m never going to get any recognition in my pack.
Days turned into months, and the moon flowed through its changes time and again. Game moved to the south and the winter snows followed. One day, the little wolf got an idea as he noted that the people and their containers also left tracks in the snow. On a particularly boring day, the little wolf waited until he was sure the pack was deep in sleep. Then he lifted his chin and howled for all his worth!
Immediately the pack was awake and came running up the hill to the vantage point where the little wolf stood perched with hackles up. “What is the danger?” asked the pack leader immediately, fangs bared and ready.
The little wolf pointed with his nose and ears in the direction of the rock-river. People had come again to invade our territory. I scared them away with my growl. You can see their tracks in the snow. They are gone now. But because you required it of me, I awakened you with my howl.
The pack leader approached the little wolf, and the little wolf’s ears swiveled, fearing he was about to get bitten on the muzzle for doing wrong again. Instead the pack leader just placed his jaws lightly over the little wolfs nose, letting the little wolf know that he was still the low wolf but had done the right thing. The little wolf licked the pack leader’s muzzle in gratitude.
The pups also came up to him, pride shining in their small faces and they actually licked the low wolf’s muzzle. That show made the little wolf’s heart glow warm with pride. “I must do this again,” he thought to himself. “Even though the people will never invade as I have made that story up, the pack will give me a little more respect each time and I will rise in the ranks.”
The little wolf waited through another dance of the moon’s cycle before he tried his plan again. On a particular brutish day with the winds howling their own fierce song and the driving snow stinging the nose, eyes and eartips, the little wolf tilted back his head and howled his message to the others of his pack.
They were slower to arrive to the hilltop as the snow was deeper and the weather was dangerous with it’s hidden ice both beneath the white blanket and overlying the snow as a breakable crust that could cut the unwary paw. The pups, the little wolf noted, were left back in the winter dens where they were warm and safe.
The pack leader was the first to clear the hilltop and gazed around through the storm. “What did you see?” he growled to the little wolf.
“People tried to invade again.”
“In THIS weather?” growled the pack leader baring his sharp fangs at the little wolf.
“Th- They did! They came but they left when I chased them down toward the rock-road. You would see their tracks, but the blowing snow has covered them up.”
The pack leader chuffed in the little wolf’s direction and padded slowly and purposely toward the rock-road, sniffing as he went trying to detect the scents of man and his machines. Within the hour, the pack leader returned to the hilltop and faced the pack.
“I find little evidence to support our watcher’s story, but if people have indeed returned to invade our home after they were chased off the first time, we must warn the others.” As one voice, the wolf pack howled the message to the other packs and the message was passed from pack to pack all along the winter landscape. “Beware, people are invading.”
Shaken by the fact that the pack leader searched for evidence to his story, the little wolf decided he should be more careful the next time he tried his trick. Time passed again. Winter snows melted and the ground became muddy and bright green as the new growth pushed up from the warming ground toward the sun. The game moved north again, following the sun’s own journey to its summer home. And the little pups that once admired the little wolf were now members of the pack and hunters themselves and would often make the little wolf show his belly to them.
With the return of the warmer weather, the little wolf spied more people again. Now is the time for my trick. “Surely” he thought to himself, “I would not be the low wolf if I could get the pack leader to confirm my story of the invasion.”
So one day, he put his brilliant plan into action. When the people were still there, aiming the silver object with the dead fish eye at him, he tilted his head back and howled. Instantly, the others came running and charged the people.
Many of the people screamed and jumped into their containers. But one grabbed a thunder stick from the back of his container and pointed it at the charging wolves. The little wolf had never seen a thunder stick before, but when the crack of thunder and the flash of lightning issued from the stick, he knew what it was from the tales the elder wolves told him when he was a pup.
The little wolf felt the bite of the thunder stick across his right shoulder. The other wolves swiftly scattered but just as quickly reconverged when they realized the little wolf was injured. “Can you run?” the pack leader barked at him as others growled and hunkered themselves down between the little wolf and the thunder stick.
“Yes,” hissed the little wolf as he climbed to all four paws despite the pain.
“Then everyone back to the hilltop. We defend our territory, our pups and our home!”
As one, the wolves lumbered up the muddy hillside and turned to face the invaders. The one person outside the containers lowered the thunder stick back into the back of his container and stood next to the opening on one side of another container, talking to the people inside. Curiously, the wolves listened, but understood little.
The little wolf had better hearing than most of his pack, and had even learned to understand some of the people’s spoken language. But there was one word he did not understand that was mentioned again and again: “rabid.”
That night, the pack howled the message to the other wolf packs around their territory. A sad tale was also passed on to them, one of sickness. A sickness from the game had come into one wolf pack and made them go mad with thirst and mindlessness. They chased shadows and turned on friends and disregarded the pack order. People had come to this pack and now that pack is no more but vanished in one day.
The little wolves pack was shaken to their souls and they howled a sad lamentation for the pack that was no more. Afterwards, they worried about their own plight with the people. The new pups would be born soon and preparations had to be made to keep them safe.
A young but larger wolf was assigned to watch during the day with the little wolf. After what occurred, the little wolf decided it was time he stopped this trick. When he tried to rise in the pack order, all he got was a sore shoulder and someone that was assigned to the same duty, as if he were no longer worthy of even this position. A depression came upon the little wolf and he cared less and less about the activity around him during the day.
His companion, however, was ever curious, as this was all new to her and she would ask the little wolf many questions about what she saw. One day the young wolf spied people. The little wolf sniffed the air and confirmed, “Yes, that’s people.” He didn’t even raise his muzzle from the warm grass where he lay.
The young wolf rose on all four paws and barked, “They’re coming up the hill and they have thunder sticks.”
The little wolf’s ears shot up and he raised his head, but the moment was passed before he knew it. The roar of the thunder stick echoed off the distant hills as his young companion dropped beside him, a strange tube embedded in her throat.
The little wolf raised his muzzle to cry the warning and heard the thunder stick again. A hot jab of pain pierced his own throat and the world around him became a warm fuzzy blur. “It’s the sickness,” his panicked mind thought just before he drifted into it’s warm welcome. One last thought crossed his drifting mind as his chin touched down on the warm grass, “I never did issue the warning this time…..”
- ESA
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