Description:

A bear gets his leg stuck in a bee-house. Based on a Russian folk tale, with music by the Dmitriy Pokrovskiy ensemble.

The script is much kinder to the bear than most traditional versions of this fairy tale (here's an example), which is typically a sort of horror story that starts with the old woman asking the old man to get her some bear meat to cook. The old man finds a bear sleeping in his den, chops off his leg with an ax (the bear doesn't wake up), then takes it home. Later, the bear wakes up and follows the scent of his missing leg back to their house, saying that he is going to eat the old woman. They throw him their various farm animals one at a time to mollify him, but he keeps coming back. Finally, they let him in the house while they hide in the oven, he falls down into the basement, and they call the rest of the village to finish him off.

In this cartoon, that story is changed substantially.