Wolfgran Returns

by Finbar O'Connor

  Important notice from the publishers:

  We are sorry to interrupt, but we have just received a letter from an old lady who is very annoyed about the last paragraph and we thought we should bring it to your attention immediately:

  Dear Sir or Madam,

  I have just finished reading the last paragraph and I am very annoyed about it. I am an old lady and I do not read murder mysteries. I only read nice books about embroidery and flower arranging. It is disgraceful to allow this so-called author to imply that old ladies such as myself ever think of violence or mayhem. We are too busy baking and plumping up cushions.

  Yours crankily,

  An Old Lady

  PS. Tell him if he doesn’t stop writing this sort of thing about old ladies we will come around to his house and dodder at him!

  Anyway, Granny had been so absorbed by her book that she had not noticed how late it was getting. Now she was in a hurry to catch the bus for the big bingo game. She hurried up the garden path, pushed open the back door and froze. There was a large wolf standing in her living room. It was a peculiar-looking creature. Its shaggy pelt looked moth-eaten and it had what looked like a zipper running down its front, but the glowing eyes and slavering jaws looked wolfish enough.

  As soon as Granny came into the cottage, the real Wolf, who was watching through a crack in the wardrobe door, began yelling and screaming, ‘Save me, Granny, save me! It is I, Little Red Riding Hood. The wicked wolf has locked me in the wardrobe.’

  Now, you might expect an old lady who comes back from the bathroom and finds that a wolf has locked her granddaughter in the wardrobe to scream and faint, or perhaps make a run (or at least a hobble) for it. But Granny Riding Hood was used to wolves. In fact she half-expected to find one lurking in her cottage from time to time, and had taken steps to deal with the problem. So, instead of screaming, fainting, running or hobbling, she merely opened the back door and yelled: ‘Horace! He’s back again!’

  ‘Coming, Auntie,’ replied a deep voice. A moment later a gigantic hairy man carrying an enormous hatchet lumbered into the room. Horace was Granny Riding Hood’s nephew. He was a woodcutter by trade and not very intelligent, but he knew how to deal with wolves.

  ‘Shall I chop his head off, Auntie?’ asked Horace, raising his axe.

  ‘Oh, I suppose so,’ said Granny irritably, ‘though he’ll make a right mess of the carpet.’

  ‘I could just wring his neck,’ suggested Horace.

  ‘Oh, could you?’ asked Granny gratefully. ‘Only I just washed that rug this morning.’

  ‘Right, Auntie,’ said Horace, putting down his axe and cracking his knuckles.

  ‘Now, just a minute,’ said Inspector Plonker as Horace advanced towards him, ‘I am Chief Inspector Plonker of the City Police.’

  Horace paused and stared at him.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen Inspector Plonker and he doesn’t have ears like those.’

  ‘And I’m Sergeant Snoop,’ said Sergeant Snoop.

  ‘I thought you were Inspector Plonker?’ said Horace, puzzled.

  ‘We’re undercover,’ said Inspector Plonker, ‘This is a disguise.’

  ‘Take it off then,’ said Horace.

  ‘Take it off, Snoop,’ ordered Inspector Plonker.

  ‘I can’t, sir,’ said Sergeant Snoop, ‘The zip’s stuck again.’

  ‘A likely story,’ scoffed Granny Riding Hood. ‘Throttle him, Horace.’

  ‘Right, Auntie,’ said Horace, moving forward again.

  ‘Just listen, will you?’ yelled Inspector Plonker, ‘It’s not us you should be throttling, it’s her, I mean him.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Horace, totally confused.

  ‘Your Auntie!’ yelled Inspector Plonker.

  ‘You want me to throttle my Auntie?’ asked Horace, horrified.

  ‘She’s not your Auntie,’ said Inspector Plonker. ‘She’s the Wolf.’

  ‘But you’re the Wolf,’ said Horace. ‘You’re the one with furry ears and a shaggy tail.’

  ‘But mine aren’t real,’ yelled Inspector Plonker. ‘His are.’

  ‘Whose are?’ asked Horace, looking more and more baffled.

  ‘Your Auntie’s,’ yelled Inspector Plonker.

  Horace looked closely at Granny Riding Hood’s grey, curly hair. He couldn’t see any furry ears, and it was obvious even to him that she didn’t have a tail. He glared at Inspector Plonker.

  ‘Stop talking through your bottom,’ he said.

  ‘Look, it’s a wig, I’ll show you,’ cried Inspector Plonker. He reached out, grabbed Granny Riding Hood’s hair and pulled vigorously.

  ‘Ouch!’ yelled granny Riding Hood. ‘He’s attacking me, Horace.’

  ‘Right, that’s it,’ said Horace, picking up his hatchet. ‘Nobody pulls my Auntie’s hair and gets away with it.’

  ‘But that’s not your Auntie, I tell you!’ cried Inspector Plonker as Horace raised the axe. ‘Your Auntie’s hiding in the wardrobe.’

  ‘He’s lying,’ yelled the Wolf from inside the wardrobe (where he had been sniggering happily at the Inspector’s dilemma). ‘I’m Little Red Riding Hood, I am.’

  ‘No, you’re not, you silly old bat,’ yelled Inspector Plonker.

  ‘Oh, just get on with it, Horace,’ said Granny Riding Hood. ‘I’m late for bingo.’

  ‘Right, Auntie,’ said Horace, lunging forward.

  Inspector Plonker and Sergeant Snoop dodged him and dived through the window, shattering the glass and landing with a thump on the grass outside.

  Granny watched until they had vanished into the trees, with Horace in hot pursuit. Then she went over to the wardrobe and opened the door.

  ‘Out you come, dear,’ she said, peering into the shadows. ‘The Wolf is gone, you’re quite safe now.’

  In a trice the Wolf pounced, stuffed her into the wardrobe and locked it. He was heading for the front door when Granny’s mobile phone, which she had left in her handbag on the table, began to ring.

  Cautiously, the Wolf answered it.

  ‘Hello?’ he said.

  ‘Granny?’ said the voice of Little Red Riding Hood. ‘Where are you? I’ve been waiting at this bus stop for ages.’

  ‘I’m on my way, my dear,’ quavered the Wolf, trying to sound like an old lady. ‘I’m on my way.’

  Chuckling wickedly to himself, the Wolf left the cottage and hurried off towards the bus stop where Little Red Riding Hood was waiting.

  Chapter Five

  A Good Hiding

  It is not easy for two people wearing a pantomime wolf costume to climb a tall tree. However, it’s surprising what you can do when you are being chased by an enraged woodcutter with a big hatchet who thinks you want to eat his Auntie. Inspector Plonker and Sergeant Snoop clung to the topmost branch of their tree and looked down nervously at the forest floor far below. After scratching his head and thinking for a moment, Horace began to chop down the tree.

  Sergeant Snoop struggled to open the zip so that they could take the costume off. But it was no use. It was stuck fast.

  ‘What are we going to do, sir?’ asked Sergeant Snoop, as the tree began to creak and rock from side to side.

  ‘Well, Snoop,’ said Inspector Plonker, ‘it looks to me like we are going to fall out of this tree and get our heads chopped off!’

  But suddenly the tree began to sway wildly in a buffeting breeze and the two policemen were almost deafened by the rattling roar of a helicopter, which came swooping down and hovered right over their heads.

  ‘Okay, Wolf,’ yelled a familiar voice. ‘Your ass is grass.’

  ‘It’s the Chief,’ cried Inspector Plonker. ‘We’re saved, Snoop!’

  It was indeed the Chief of Police, who had been patrolling the forest in the hope of spotting the Wolf. Now he could hardly believe his luck! He produced a double-barrelled shotgun and took careful aim.

  ‘Don’t shoot, Chief,’ cried Inspector Plonker. ‘Its me, Inspector Plonker.’

  �
�No it’s not,’ replied the Chief. ‘Plonker may not be very handsome, but even he doesn’t have ears like yours.’

  ‘Don’t shoot, Chief,’ yelled Sergeant Snoop. ‘It’s me, Sergeant Snoop.’

  ‘You can’t fool me, Wolf,’ yelled the Chief. ‘I know Sergeant Snoop, and he definitely doesn’t have a long, shaggy tail.’

  ‘Open that zip, Snoop,’ bawled Inspector Plonker.

  ‘I’m trying, sir, I’m trying,’ screamed Sergeant Snoop.

  ‘Your hide is fried, Wolf,’ yelled the Chief of Police, slowly squeezing the trigger.

  Desperately Sergeant Snoop reached up and grabbed one of the wheels of the helicopter.

  ‘Hang on, sir,’ he yelled and swung out of the tree. There was a deafening boom as the shotgun went off, blasting the branch the two policemen had been hanging onto a moment before.

  ‘Trying to board me, eh?’ sneered the Chief of Police, taking aim again as the helicopter sped over the forest with Sergeant Snoop and Inspector Plonker hanging on for dear life.

  Now, one of the first things they teach you at helicopter school is that if you ever find a wolf dangling from your undercarriage you should not, under any circumstances, try to blast it with a shotgun. Of course, what the Chief of Police had dangling from his helicopter was not a wolf, but two policemen in a wolf suit. However, the same rule still applies. He definitely should not have started taking pot-shots at them.

  Fortunately for Inspector Plonker and Sergeant Snoop, he missed them and shot off his tail rotor instead. The tail rotor is the small propeller at the back of the helicopter. Without it, instead of flying in a straight line, the helicopter spins round and round like a carousel. This is what the Chief’s helicopter now began to do. As the Chief of Police struggled frantically with the controls, the stricken machine tumbled across the sky. Inspector Plonker and Sergeant Snoop watched as the forest passed in a green whirling blur below. Finally, as they reached the edge of the trees, the two policemen lost their grip and fell wailing towards the ground while the helicopter vanished into the distance.

  Luckily for them, their fall was broken when they landed on the Wolf!

  Not that the Wolf saw it that way of course. He had left the shelter of the forest and was nearly at the bus stop. He could see Little Red Riding Hood waving at him and shouting, ‘Hello, Granny.’ There was nobody else around, apart from a bunch of old ladies who were waiting for the bingo bus. The Wolf’s plan was to grab Little Red Riding Hood and vanish back into the woods. He didn’t think a few old ladies would cause him any problems.

  And then the sky seemed to fall on his head.

  Though in fact, as we know, it was not the sky – it was Sergeant Snoop and Inspector Plonker dressed as a pantomime wolf.

  So, as I said, at first this seemed like a piece of luck, especially when Sergeant Snoop noticed that the old lady they had landed on had a long, shaggy tail!

  ‘Sir,’ he exclaimed, ‘this old lady we just landed on has a long, shaggy tail!’

  ‘Snoop,’ groaned Inspector Plonker, ‘I don’t care if she has a cold, wet nose and soft, silky ears. Get me to a hospital.’

  ‘But don’t you understand, sir?’ said Sergeant Snoop eagerly as the two policemen struggled to their feet. ‘This must be the Wolfgran!’

  ‘What?’ exclaimed Inspector Plonker. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sergeant Snoop, ‘it’s a wolf dressed as an old lady. And there’s Little Red Riding Hood over there. We’ve got him, sir.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Inspector Plonker. ‘I knew my plan would work. Slap the cuffs on him and we’ll take him back to the station. I can’t wait to see the expression on the Chief’s face.’

  But the Wolf was a quick thinker.

  ‘Help, help!’ he cried. ‘I’m just a poor old woman being attacked by a wolf.’

  ‘Help, help!’ cried Little Red Riding Hood. ‘The Big Bad Wolf is trying to eat my Granny.’

  Inspector Plonker and Sergeant Snoop very quickly found themselves surrounded by a large crowd of very angry old ladies. They were muttering furiously and brandishing handbags, umbrellas and knitting needles.

  ‘Attack a defenceless old woman, would you?’ said one.

  ‘Big hairy hooligan,’ grumbled another.

  ‘I blame the parents,’ mumbled a third.

  ‘Give him a good hiding,’ quavered a fourth.

  ‘Ladies, ladies,’ said Inspector Plonker nervously, ‘I assure you, we are police officers and we have just apprehended a dangerous criminal.’

  ‘What did it say?’ said the first old lady.

  ‘Didn’t hear a word of it,’ said the second.

  ‘Everybody mumbles nowadays,’ said the third.

  ‘Claims he’s a policeman,’ said a fourth.

  ‘Not with those ears he ain’t,’ said a fifth.

  ‘Give him a good hiding,’ said the others.

  As Sergeant Snoop desperately tried to unfasten the zip, the old ladies closed in and began whacking, prodding and poking the two cowering policemen.

  Important notice from the publishers:

  We interrupt this painful scene to bring you another letter from the same old lady who wrote before, who is even more upset about this paragraph than she was about the last one:

  Dear Sir or Madam,

  I am the same old lady who wrote before and I am even more upset about this paragraph than I was about the last one. Old ladies do not beat up policemen at bus stops. They are far too busy watching afternoon quiz shows on the television and trying to remember where they left their false teeth. Old ladies are gentle and kind and wouldn’t hurt a fly, so there.

  Yours grumpily,

  The Same Old Lady Who Wrote Before

  PS. Tell this so-called author that if he does not stop writing nasty things about old ladies we will come around to his house and knock over his milk bottles.

  When the bus arrived, the old ladies left Inspector Plonker and Sergeant Snoop lying in a heap on the pavement and climbed aboard, taking Little Red Riding Hood and the slightly dazed Wolf with them. The Wolf was delighted – he had fooled them into thinking that he was Granny Riding Hood and that the two policemen were the Big Bad Wolf. But he was also a little nervous. He had seen what they did to Inspector Plonker and Sergeant Snoop, and he was afraid that if he tried to snatch Little Red Riding Hood they would do the same to him!

  On the other hand, now that they thought the Wolf was out of the way, they would never suspect he was actually on the bus with them. The Wolf grinned nastily. All he had to do was bide his time. His plan was working perfectly.

  Chapter Six

  Pet Patrol

  If you have a television in your house then you may have watched a programme called ‘Pet Patrol’. On this programme two vets called Bruce and Sheila drive around the city in a big green ambulance (which they call the Big Green Ambulance), rescuing animals that have been cruelly treated and finding them good homes with kind people. Bruce and Sheila are two big, strapping sun-tanned persons who always wear shorts, white socks and hiking boots.

  Well, if you had been watching ‘Pet Patrol’ on the day that this story takes place, you would have seen the Big Green Ambulance parked beside a bus stop. Bruce was bent over something battered and hairy that was lying on the pavement, and Sheila was speaking earnestly into a microphone.

  ‘G’day, viewers,’ Sheila was saying, ‘and welcome to “Pet Patrol”. The Big Green Ambulance has been called to a bus stop just outside town where somebody seems to have been mistreating this poor old wolf. Bruce is just examining the little fella now. How’s he doing, Bruce?’

  ‘Not too good, Sheila, not too good,’ replied Bruce. ‘In fact, I think this is the worst case of cruelty to a wolf I’ve seen in a long time. It looks as though somebody’s been poking the poor little bloke with knitting needles!’

  ‘Strewth, Bruce,’ said Sheila. ‘Why would anybody do that?’

  ‘Oh, we get a lot of that at this time of year,
Sheila,’ said Bruce. ‘People buy wolves as Christmas presents, then as soon as they get big and start eating the kids they just dump ’em on the street!’

  ‘Blimey, Bruce, that’s just awful,’ said Sheila. ‘Isn’t there anything you can do for the poor little blighter?’

  ‘Well, Sheila, he’s pretty far gone,’ said Bruce. ‘I think the kindest thing we can do for him is to put him out of his misery.’

  ‘Crikey, Bruce, that’s really, really sad,’ said Sheila. ‘So what’ll you do? Give the poor little beggar an injection?’

  ‘Actually, Sheila,’ said Bruce, ‘I was thinking of just running him over with the Big Green Ambulance.’

  ‘Fair dinkum, mate,’ said Sheila, as Bruce climbed into the ambulance and started up the engine. ‘Remember, viewers, a wolf is for life, not just for Christmas.’

  Luckily, Sergeant Snoop and Inspector Plonker, who had been knocked unconscious by the old ladies, were starting to come around.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ cried Inspector Plonker. ‘We’re undercover police officers.’

  ‘With those ears?’ said Bruce scornfully. ‘I don’t think so, mate.’

  ‘Right,’ said Inspector Plonker, ‘we’re commandeering your vehicle.’

  The two policemen sprang up, dragged Bruce out of the ambulance, jumped behind the wheel and drove off down the road towards the city.

  ‘Well I’ll be a dingo’s do-dos, Bruce,’ said Sheila. ‘He’s only gone and nicked the Big Green Ambulance!’

  ‘The ungrateful brute,’ exclaimed Bruce, ‘And after all we’ve done for him.’

  ‘Stay tuned, viewers,’ said Sheila. ‘We’ll soon catch up with him.’

  ‘And when we do,’ said Bruce, ‘I’m gonna stuff him in a sack full of bricks and chuck him in the canal.’