Spin-offs are older than people realize, and Disney’s been riding that bandwagon for a long, long time. Why not? The part that people don’t talk about when they’re complaining about sequels and spin-offs is that they wouldn’t get made if they didn’t make money. Though the fact that this cartoon is a spin-off of Dumbo is not strictly relevant, and arguably it’s more just a cameo of a character who was barely more than a cameo in his first appearance, a stork played by Sterling Holloway, who was the narrator anyway.

Here, he is bringing a very large load of lambs to a field of sheep. “Pick out the ewe that you like best,” he tells them, “and she will be your mother.” (A line I’ve quoted randomly for years; people almost never get it.) The last lamb is deeply asleep, and Mr. Stork rolls him out of the cloth—to discover that it is in fact a lion cub. By the time he sorts out the problem, young Lambert (Stan Freberg in his one spoken line; June Foray for the noises he makes) has bonded with one of the ewes (June Foray), and she’s not giving him back. But life is not good for Lambert, who’s a coward—and it seems quite a lot of those lambs were ram lambs. (Yes, that’s a technical term.) Then one night, a wolf finds the flock and picks out the ewe that he likes best, so it will be his dinner.

People are not aware of how fierce sheep can be. Because we think, you know, sheepish. But rams aren’t kidding around, and you don’t want to get between a ewe and her lamb. Those horns aren’t for show. Most of the time, sheep are dumb and placid. But when you get in their way, that’s probably not going to go well for you. That’s part of why lone wolves seldom take large animals from herds, really; herds are there for the animals’ protection.

I’ve read from many people the speculation that the Stereotypical Disney Death (which isn’t as common as people think; I broke down the numbers once) has to do with not wanting to show a body onscreen. And that’s definitely fair, given these are family programming. It’s still interesting to me that the wolf is clearly intending to eat Lambert’s mother, but we are reassured that Lambert didn’t kill him, because the branch he’s on has berries every spring. Which, you know, starving to death is a thing for the rest of the year. And arguably more gruesome than just falling to his death or being killed by a lion.

It’s interesting to me that Disney cartoons often take evolution for granted, even before it was taught in much of the US, but still have storks as characters every now and again. I mean, when Darling has a baby in Lady and the Tramp, they just don’t talk about any details. But I was amazed while watching Tangled because I think it’s one of the first explicit Disney pregnancies, certainly in the Disney Princess canon. The only other one I can think of is Chicha in The Emperor’s New Groove. Then again, this story doesn’t make sense without a stork.

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