One day a peasant was walking through the forest. Suddenly a huge hungry wolf came towards him. The wolf saw the peasant and said:
- Well, get ready to die: now I’ll eat you!
- What did I do to you? - asks the peasant. - Why do you want to destroy me?
- And you don’t seem to know?
- No, I don’t know. Do me a favor, tell me!
“You didn’t let me sleep in the juniper this morning.” The sound of your trumpets still gives me a headache!
- My dear, think about what you are saying! What trumpet sounds are there? After all, I just blew my nose.
- Whatever it is, I’ll still eat you now!
“Well, whoever is stronger is always right,” said the peasant. “There’s nothing you can do about it: if you want to eat me, eat me.” Just let me wash myself by the stream first, otherwise I will get dusty and dirty.
“Well, so be it, go to the stream and wash yourself,” the wolf allowed.
He sat down to the side and began to wait. And the peasant went to the stream, bent down, as if he were really washing himself, and imperceptibly broke off a thick rowan branch.
-Are you ready? - asks the wolf.
“Ready,” the peasant answers.
He approached the wolf, grabbed it by the tail with his left hand, and with his right began to beat it with a stick and say:
- You have strength - I have intelligence! You have teeth - I have savvy!
And he beat the wolf so badly that he had no hair left on his sides.
The wolf strained and strained, and finally rushed so hard that his tail came off. The wolf ran away, and the tail remained in the hands of the peasant.
He put the wolf's tail in his bag and walked on, laughing.
But the wolf soon came to his senses and began to howl, calling out to other wolves:
- Hey, wolves, run to me quickly!
So many wolves gathered to hear his howl that you couldn’t even count them.
The short wolf told them what the man had done to him.
The wolves howled and rushed to catch up with the peasant. The peasant heard a wolf howl and realized that the wolves were catching up with him.
Without thinking twice, he climbed a tall pine tree and sat down on a thick branch. He sits and looks down.
The wolves ran up and stood around the pine tree, looking at the man and chattering their teeth. They stand and conspire:
- We need to pull him out of the tree!
- We need it, but how can we get it?
The wolves thought for a long time what to do. Finally the oldest wolf said:
- Let one wolf stand under a pine tree, another will stand on his back, and a third will stand on another, a fourth on a third, a fifth on a fourth - in a word, as long as it takes to get to the branch on which the person is sitting... Then we will drag him down!
The wolves liked this very much, and especially the short-tailed one.
He immediately stood under the pine tree and ordered the other wolves to stand on his back:
- Let's get this scoundrel and tear it into pieces!
So the wolves climbed one on top of the other - higher and higher, higher and higher...
The last wolf has already climbed up and is about to grab the peasant...
The peasant saw that things were bad, but he was not at a loss - he took a wolf’s tail out of his bag, threw it down and shouted:
- Hey, short one! Here's your tail! Take it! Maybe you'll do it again!
The short one was delighted and ran after his tail. Then all the wolves fell to the ground, almost breaking their necks! They howled with anger and ran to catch up with the short guy: after all, it was his fault that all this happened!
And the peasant climbed down from the pine tree and returned home safely.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru