The Russian fable of The Fox and the Wolf is also
known as "The Lame Who Carried the Strong."
A fisherman is carrying his catch of fish back to his house on a sled when he
comes across a fox. The fox is limp, and appears half-dead. The fisherman picks
her up and puts her on the sled with the fish. As they move towards home, the
fox slowly drops the fish off the sled one by one. Upon reaching the house, the
fisherman doesn't notice that most of his fish are missing, and brings what fish
are left into the house along with the fox. While the fisherman goes off to do
his chores, the fox gets up and goes into the kitchen. She finds some sour
cream and eats it. She then steals a chicken and a napkin. While trying to
gather up the fish that are left over, the fox finds that she can't carry them
all. The fox ties the napkin to her head and smears the rest of the sour cream
on her face and stuffs the chicken into her pocket.
The fox then sets out on the path that brought her to the house, and on her
way, the fox runs across an injured wolf. The wolf explains that he was in a
fight with a bear and that he broke his leg. The sly fox plays lame as well,
and convinces the wolf that she is worse off than he is. "Look at what the
villagers did to me!" she wailed, pointing to the napkin on her head and
sour cream on her face. Believing the fox, the wolf carries her back to the
lake. The wolf tells the fox how hungry he is. The selfish and cunning fox
tells the wolf that she will teach him an easy way to catch fish. She leads the
wolf to an ice hole and tells him to put his tail in it and to repeat some
magic words. The fox slowly starts walking away, collecting the fish she dropped from the sled earlier. As the wolf sits there
repeating the magic words, the ice hole freezes with
the wolf's tail stuck in it. Now the wolf can no longer catch the fox, and the
fox outsmarts everyone.
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