By Far the Most Disturbing Thing the Grimm Brothers Ever Wrote

Okay so I'm reading the Lucy Crane translation of select tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. While this is the source of such eternal classics as "Little Red Riding Hood" ("Little Red-Cap"), "Cinderella" ("Aschenputtel"), and "Rapunzel" (same name), as well as lesser known but wonderful stories like "Mother Hulda" and "The Fisherman and His Wife" (what does the ending mean? Anyone know?), not all of the stories are gorgeous gems. Some are just...bizarre.

Today I read "The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage." This is a good example of a tale with a fairly straightforward message (everyone has a special skill and should stick with that lest disaster strike), but with content so weird and awful that the message does not matter because you'll forget all about it while trying to get the weirdness out of your mind. Follow that link to read it. It's short. I'll wait. In case you're busy here is a synopsis:

Mouse, Bird, and Sausage live together and each perform their own household tasks. It works pretty well: the sausage cooks dinner, the bird collects firewood, the mouse does pretty much everything else. Don't look too closely though at what you're eating, because the sausage dips himself into the broth and swirls himself around to make it taste better.

If your life looks like this, get out while you still can.

(That is all you need to know. Oh, and the bird screws it all up by deciding he would like to switch jobs. Sausages are not good at collecting firewood. 'Nuff said.)

The following is a transcript of Dave's comment on the story after I explained it to him this morning:

"So...after the sausage flavours the broth, does he eat it?"

I think the answer is yes. THE ANSWER IS YES.

It will take man's best friend to get us out of this hell.