A she-goat, confident in her ability to protect herself, decided to venture from the herd. She found new and rare pasture to enjoy further up the mountain, but as she grazed she came upon a wolf’s whelp cowering in the shelter of a stunted tree. “What are you doing out here on your own? Where are your parents?” she asked. “I don’t know,” the whelp replied. “I can’t find them. I’ve been looking for days. I’m so hungry.”

The she-goat took pity on the whelp. She could see it would not survive much longer alone, it was so scrawny and sallow. And it was too young and too enfeebled to do her harm. So she lay down and invited it to suckle. She watched with pleasure as the whelp’s tail tapped against the ground while it fed.

The two became a kind of family: the whelp not straying far from his nurse, the she-goat chewing tender grasses, keeping an eye on the lad as he rolled and tumbled and messed around. But the whelp grew stronger and one day it disappeared from sight. The she-goat stood and let out an anxious penetrating call that echoed across the mountain side. The whelp soon came running back, but the she-goat’s relief was short-lived. The whelp was bringing her something, a gift, bloody and frigid, a dead squirrel, which it lay proudly before its surrogate mother.

She saw the youthful sparkle in the wolf’s eye, the yellow glint of his emerging teeth, and knew that he would soon do her harm. She jabbed him with her horns.

“Go,” she said. “Go. Now. Before we hurt each other.”

© Richard Parkin, 2025

Further reading: Misadventures in the Land of Fables #59