The Nurse and the Wolf

A hungry wolf, prowling outside a cottage at dusk, overheard a nurse inside scolding a crying infant, threatening in frustration, "Stop crying, or I'll throw you outside to the wolves!" The wolf, delighted at this apparent promise of an easy meal, settled down patiently outside the door, certain his dinner would soon be delivered to him.

He waited through the entire evening, then the entire night, growing hungrier and more impatient with every passing hour, but the door never opened and no child was ever thrown out to him. By dawn, giving up entirely, he trudged back toward the forest, grumbling to himself about being deceived.

An older, more experienced wolf he met along the way laughed at his story. "You should know by now," the old wolf said, "that what people say in a moment of frustration is rarely what they actually mean to do. Only a fool builds his dinner plans around an angry threat spoken in the heat of the moment rather than around what someone genuinely intends." The young wolf, hungry and humbled, learned to judge intentions by pattern and follow-through rather than by a single heated word.