Wolves by Pu Songling
A butcher hangs his meat in a tree to stop a wolf following him; returning at daylight, he finds the wolf caught on the meat-hook and gains a valuable skin. In a separate encounter, another butcher shelters from a wolf in a crop-watchman's shed, seizes its paw, inflates it through a cut in the skin, and carries the immobilized animal home.
By Pu Songling · Genre: Short Stories, Animal Tale, Humor · 530 words
First lines
I. -- A certain village butcher, who had bought some meat at market and was returning home in the evening, suddenly came across a wolf, which followed him closely, its mouth watering at the sight of what he was carrying. The butcher drew his knife and drove the animal off; and then reflecting that his meat was the attraction, he determined to hang it up in a tree and fetch it the next morning. This he accordingly did, and the wolf followed him no further; but when he went at daylight to recover his property, he saw something hanging up in the tree resembling a human corpse. It turned out to be the wolf, which, in its efforts to get at the meat, had been caught on the meat-hook like a fish; and as the skin of a wolf was just then worth ten ounces of silver, the butcher found himself possessed of quite a little capital. Here we have a laughable instance of the result of "climbing trees to catch fish. "[1]
Genres
- Short Stories — Two brief prose narratives each recount a butcher's encounter with a wolf and its unexpected resolution.
- Animal Tale — Wolves pursuing butchers drive both episodes, ending caught on a hook or immobilized by inflation.
- Humor — The first episode ends with a joke about catching fish in trees; the second describes a wolf inflated to the size of a cow.
Tags
butchers · animal attacks · self-defense · meat-hooks · resourcefulness
What this Textopian page supports
Wolves is listed on Textopian as a short story by Pu Songling, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Short story
- Author: Pu Songling
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Short Stories, Animal Tale, Humor
- Length: 530 words
- Structure: 1 section, 4 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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