Clubs again! Yay! Clubs means Chekhov in the Deal Me In Short Story Reading Challenge–it does, in my deck, anyway.

The story I read was:

Whitebrow

by Anton Chekhov

So this mother wolf is really, really hungry. She jumps onto a farmer’s shed and scrabbles through the roof. She hears and smells lambs and grabs the first thing that comes to mouth and runs away. It’s a puppy.

Her cubs don’t know they should be afraid of dogs and the puppy doesn’t know he should be afraid of wolves, and the mother decides to let the puppies learn to hunt by playing with the puppy rather than with prey. As if they aren’t already playing with each other, and as if dogs are prey animals.

Although she’s near starvation, the wolf doesn’t eat the puppy because she doesn’t fancy the way he smells. Because she can afford to be choosy, right?

And the next night, she goes back to the same farm that she roused the night before because they still have lambs. The puppy, of course, follows her and kicks up a fuss because he’s so glad to be home.

She runs away, and the farmer fusses at the puppy (who kinda sorta saved the farmer’s lambs twice) for digging holes in the roof instead of going in through the door.

And I’m like, “He could go in at the door? The wolf could have gone in through the door?”

Oh, Chekhov, Chekhov, I love you so much!

~*~

If YOU need a short story to read, I have free ones here on my Free Reads page. I also have four collections for 99 cents each linked from my Short Stories page.

A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Write about a lamb.