"The Three Physically Diminutive Pigs" by Erin N. Conley

The wolf was delighted to read the words, and went off to see the three pigs that very day They readily agreed to hire him, and set about the task of finding materials to build their houses to see if the wolf could get past their defenses. If they could come up with a blueprint that was entirely burglar-proof, they would be business tycoons in no time flat.

The first efficiently undersized pig was the laziest of the three, and was unwilling to go to great measures to build his house. He had noticed a stable nearby, so he crept up to it and, when no one was looking, swiped several bales of hay to build his house. Less is more, hey thought to himself, assuming that the popularity of the cliche meant that his house would be safe.

So he built a house of straw. It consisted of four walls, bound together with carelessly wrapped pieces of straw, and held up only by the piles of dirt around them, and a roof, consisting of loosely strewn straw laying across the top of the walls that occasionally fell off in the summer breeze. The pig himself could barely fit into the house, but it was finished in just ten minutes. This was good business sense, he thought--quick production means mass production which means they would be rolling in the dough in no time.

The wolf, happy in his new job as house-tester, strolled up to the straw house, whistling to himself. "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow, blow, blow your house down," he sang off-key, belting out a little-known and short lived contemporary song that the pigs would later mistake for his own words. As he sang and warbled and whistled, the roof of the straw house blew off. The wolf stopped and blinked, then gave another experimental blow. The walls fell down, and the wolf stared in horror as the irate pig stood up, covered with straw, and glowered at him. "Quick, efficient production!" he squealed. "Mass dwelling production! We would have made millions! And you ruined it!" He stamped toward the wolf, who looked embarrassed until the second little pig came along and calmed the first one down on the wolf's behalf, saying that he was only doing his job. The first little pig stalked off to find the third little pig to tell his woes to.

The second little pig gestured the wolf along, and proceeded in building his own house. Now, the second pig was somewhat more intelligent than the first, and decided that a strong but lightweight house would be the best way to go. So he painstakingly gathered all the sticks he could find, and built a house out of them, outdoing his brother by giving it two rooms with a swinging door between them, and a roof secured with ropes. He looked proudly at his dwelling and challenged the wolf to get through its locked door.

The wolf stared blankly at the stick house, unsure of how to proceed. Perhaps he wasn't cut out for this job. "Whassa matter, you chicken?" crowed the second pig, and playfully but harshly slugged the wolf in the stomach. The wolf, being fairly soft, had the wind knocked out of him, and exhaled sharply--causing the stick house to collapse entirely. The second pig stared dejectedly at the pile of sticks, glared at the wolf, and gave him a parting kick and left him there gasping for breath.

When the wolf got his wits about him again, he look in confusion down the path the second pig had went. Was he fired? Was he still supposed to try the third pig's house? Either way, he told himself as he gathered his meager courage, he certainly wasn't going to walk away without pay for the work he had already done, so he set off in search of the third pig's house.

Now, the third petite pig was the smartest, and also quite likely the strangest one of the bunch. In fact, he was a bit of a pyromaniac. As such, he built his sturdy house out of bricks, and lined the walls with a fireplace every few feet. The wolf gasped in admiration as he came upon the building, which appeared to be a castle compared to the past houses. Unsure of his standing in his job for the moment, he tentatively strode up to the door and knocked on it politely. "Ummm excuse me," he said, "Little pigs? Are you there? Could you let me in please?"

The was a long silence, and then the third pig bellowed "Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!" a nonsensical retort that only further proved his mental instability. The wolf was taken aback a minute, and then decided this was part of the act for him to test the house, so shrugged and circled the house thoughtfully, looking for a way to get in. Finally he looked up at the fireplaces and rubbed his hands together. Surely one of them must be large enough for his obese body to squeeze through.

So he huffed and he puffed as he climbed the brick wall, and just as he thought he could tolerate no more, he reached the top of the chimney. He listened briefly for pigs' voices, but all was silent. So he slowly took a great breath, sucked in his even greater gut, stuck his feet in the chimney, and let go of the bricks.

"Now!" Screamed a voice inside the house. "Fry that sucker!" The story ended with a loud explosion that sent the village into a panic, thinking a nuclear bomb had struck as they stared in horror at the circle of fire that was the flames coming out of the third pig's chimneys. Their senses seduced by the pyrotechnics, no one noticed the very surprised and very charred wolf flying out of one of the chimneys.

Following this, a long boring court case ensued, involving the wolf suing for being left unpaid for his service, and for sustaining bodily injuries that workman's comp should rightly cover, and the pigs suing for damaged property and loss of business. Unfortunately, this less interesting version of the tale has been blown up over the years for obvious reasons; ironically, it was putting children to sleep too quickly. As it so happened, no one lived happily ever after, but the case was eventually settled by a rather bewildered court.