Once a girl set off through the forest to visit her grandmother. She brought along a basket of bread and milk. Around her head she wore a fine red kerchief her grandmother had gotten her.

Along the way the encountered a wolf. Although sinewy and fearsome, the wolf was hidden in the shadows. When he greeted the girl with a smooth voice, however, he stepped from the shadows like Harvey Keitel in The Piano, revealing the full length of his male body. Her eyes widened, and she sputtered a hello in return.

"Where are you going on this fine day?" the wolf inquired.

"To my grandmother's house," answered the girl, matter-of-factly. "She lives through the woods in a beautiful cottage with pink roses out front."

"And which path are you taking?" the wolf queried. "The path of pins or the path of needles?"

"The path of pins."

So the wolf took the path of the needles and, sprinting, arrived first. He prowled around the cottage, spotted an open window, and let himself in. He took grandmother by surprise and forced her down into his slavering throat. Then he slipped into one of her nightgowns, enjoying the feel of the female undergarments on his body, and crawled into bed.

Then the girl arrived. Knocking on the front door, she heard something like her grandmother's voice beckon her inside. She entered.

She set down the gifts she brought and offered a greeting to her grandmother.

"Take off your clothes and get into bed," the grandmother/wolf instructed.

So the girl removed her apron and asked, "what shall I do with it?" "Throw it on the fire, you won't need it anymore."

For each garment, from her kerchief to her bodice and petticoats, she stripped it off and asked the same question. Always, the wolf told her, "throw it on the fire," and she did. The wolf gazed at the fire glinting off her nubile form and he beckoned her closer, patting a place on the bed where she was to sit down.

But as she got closer to the figure on the bed, her nose and eyes made it clear something was amiss.

"Grandmother, what big shoulders you have!"

"Why, that's the better to carry firewood with, my dear." said the wolf, groping the girl as she sat on the bed.

"And what long fingernails you have!"

"That's the better to scratch myself with, my dear."

"And what sharp teeth you have!"

"The better to eat you with!"

Just then the wolf disentangled himself from grandmother's gabardine and leapt at the girl, swallowing her whole just as he had her grandmother. But a woodsman on his way home had nosed the wolf's trail disappearing into the house, and jumped into the window. In a flash, the woodsman had lopped off the head of the wolf. From the wolf-corpse a hand extended itself. It was the girl; the woodsman helped her slide herself, still alive and breathtaking in him glimmering nude form, from the wolf's body. The two fell into grandmother's bed.

Much later, the woodsman helped the grandmother out of the wolf's body.