Little Red Riding Hood

A little girl, known throughout her village for the red hooded cloak she always wore, was sent by her mother to carry a basket of food through the forest to her sick grandmother's cottage, with strict instructions to stay on the path and speak to no one along the way.

A cunning wolf, meeting her on the path, asked innocently where she was headed, and the trusting girl told him everything — her grandmother's cottage, its location, even that the door was always left unlocked. The wolf raced ahead by a shortcut, reached the cottage first, swallowed the grandmother whole, and disguised himself in her nightclothes and cap, waiting in her bed for the girl to arrive.

When Red Riding Hood arrived and remarked on her "grandmother's" unusually large eyes, ears, and teeth, the wolf's final answer — "the better to eat you with!" — came just as he lunged at her. Her cries drew a passing woodcutter, who burst in with his axe, cut the wolf open, and freed the grandmother unharmed from within, teaching Red Riding Hood a lesson about trusting strangers she never forgot.