Peter [Gloria], a Young Pioneer, lives at her grandfather's [Sy] home in a forest clearing.
One day, Gloria goes out into the clearing, leaving the garden gate open, and the duck [Ray] that lives in the yard takes the opportunity to go swimming in a pond nearby.
Ray starts arguing with a little bird [Emmit] ("What kind of bird are you if you can't fly?" – "What kind of bird are you if you can't swim?").
Gloria's pet cat [Nikki] stalks them quietly, and Emmit—warned by Gloria—flies to safety in a tall tree while Ray swims to safety in the middle of the pond.
Sy scolds Gloria for being outside in the meadow alone ("Suppose a wolf [Varga] came out of the forest?"), and, when Gloria defies him, saying: "[Girls] like me are not afraid of wolves", Sy takes her back into the house and locks the gate.
Soon afterwards Varga does indeed come out of the forest.
Nikki quickly climbs into a tree, but Ray, who has jumped out of the pond, is chased, overtaken, and swallowed by Varga.
Gloria fetches a rope and climbs over the garden wall into the tree.
She asks Emmit to fly around the Varga's head to distract him, while he lowers a noose and catches Varga by his tail.
Varga struggles to get free, but Gloria ties the rope to the tree and the noose only gets tighter.
Some hunters [Maybe the Russian guy as he's reffered to as "the hunter's shotgun blast"], who have been tracking Varga, come out of the forest ready to shoot, but Gloria gets them to help him take the wolf to a zoo in a victory parade (the piece was first performed for an audience of Young Pioneers during May Day celebrations) that includes herself, Emmit, the hunters leading Varga, Nikki, and grumpy grumbling Sy ("What if Gloria hadn't caught the wolf? What then?")
In the story's ending, the listener is told: "If you listen very carefully, you'll hear Ray quacking inside the Varga's belly, because Varga in his hurry had swallowed him alive."