# The Wolf and the Crane

_Aesop_ · 1 min read · ages 4-8

A wolf with a bone stuck in his throat begs a crane to pull it out and promises to make it worth her while. When she asks for her fee, the wolf bares his teeth and says she pulled her head out again without getting it bitten off, and that is payment enough.

---

Once there was a wolf who got a bone stuck in his throat. He coughed and choked and shook his head, but however hard he tried, the bone would not come up.

So he went to a crane, a tall bird with a long neck and a long, thin bill that could reach where his own paws never could.

“Please,” he begged her, “put your bill down my throat and pull this bone out. I’ll make it worth your while.”

The crane did as she was asked. She put her head right inside the wolf’s mouth, reached down, and drew the bone out with no trouble at all. At once the wolf could swallow again.

He thanked her warmly and was just turning away when she called after him, “What about my fee?”

“Well, what about it?” the wolf snapped, baring his teeth. “You put your head into a wolf’s mouth and pulled it out again without getting it bitten off. That’s payment enough. What more do you want?”

**Moral:** If you do a favor for someone wicked, don’t count on being repaid, and be glad if you come away unharmed.

---

- Read online: https://talerie.com/en/tales/the-wolf-and-the-crane
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7775430
- Tale type: Perry 156 (per Wikidata)
- Source: Aesop's Fables: a new translation, tr. V. S. Vernon Jones (1912) (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11339)
- Public-domain basis: Talerie contemporary retelling (CC0 2026), based on: Aesop's Fables: a new translation, tr. V. S. Vernon Jones (1912) — translation: author died 564 BC (+70 passed); translator V. S. Vernon Jones died 1955 (+70 passed)
- License: CC0-1.0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)