The doctor was surprised when he walked into the patient room at the hospital to find Mrs. Goat and her seven children waiting for him.
“Mrs. Goat, it’s good to see you,” said the doctor. “But why are you here on your day off? Are your children ill? They seem healthy enough.” He added this last part as the kids were all bouncing around the room.
“Well Doctor, it’s a bit of a long story,” said Mrs. Goat, “but I’ll tell you what I know happened.
“Yesterday I needed to go to the grocery store to get food for myself and the kids, and since I didn’t want to drag all of them to the store, I told them I trusted them to behave themselves at home and to make sure they didn’t open the doors to any strangers, especially that wolf who’s been sulking around. They promised they’d behave, and so I left.
“Well a couple hours later, I came home to find the place completely ransacked! Furniture overturned, cupboards open, everything! I couldn’t find any of my kids, so I screamed their names while running from room to room. When I called Billy, my youngest,” and here Mrs. Goat pointed at one of her kids, “he popped out from the grandfather clock!
“Billy told me everything that happened while crying. Apparently that wolf did drop by shortly after I left, and my kids told him to go away because his voice was too rough to be mine. Then I guess he came back again shortly after, and his voice was softer, but my kids told him to go away again because they could see his black feet and they know mine are white. Then he came a third time and he had a soft voice and white feet, so I guess my children let him in. When they realized who it was they ran and hid, but he found and ate all of them but Billy.
“After Billy told me everything I took him and left to search for the wolf. Fortunately we found him down the block, napping under a tree. His stomach was wiggling and moving all over, so I sent Billy home to get my first aid kit. With all these kids and my nursing degree it’s easier to patch them up at home than bring them here, so I have all kinds of things in my kit. Well I took my scissors and cut the wolf open after applying some anesthetic to his nose, and out popped all six of my kids! I don’t know how they survived, but they did.
“I also found some chalk in his stomach: I guess he ate that to make his voice sound less harsh. And his feet had flour on them to make them white. I’ll need to have a talk with that miller about why on earth he’d do that for the wolf. Anyway, I had my kids bring me rocks, and I loaded them up in the wolf’s stomach and stitched him back up, neat as can be. Then I took my kids home. Mrs. Beaver mentioned to me this morning that the wolf was found dead in the Badgers' pool, so I’m glad to be rid of him.”
“I say, Mrs. Goat,” the doctor interjected, “this is all quite fantastic. So you want me to check over your kids to be sure they’re alright after being eaten?”
“No doctor, they’re fine from that. I want you to perform some tests to see why they have so little common sense, to mistake a wolf for me!”
About half of Mrs. Goat's kids. (Web source: SynchroMiss)
Author's note: I'm a big fan of the Brothers Grimm. After reading The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids, it occurred to me that the poor goat mother must have been out of her mind with dealing with seven kids, especially ones who had so little common sense. I gave her a nursing degree to explain why she was so skillful at cutting open and sewing up a wolf, and hinted that she worked at the hospital with the doctor's opening dialogue. While it's common for characters in fairy tales to display little common sense, I wanted to imply that another character recognizes in the story that this isn't right.
Bibliography
"The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids," from The Grimm Brother's Children's and Household Tales, translated by D. L. Ashliman. Web source.
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