Delivery Stork

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
They can grip them by the husk.

Well you were dropped down the chimney by a big hairy pterodactyl.

—Calvin's dad puts a new spin on the trope.

For many years, when a kid whose parents don't think they're ready for The Talk asked the question "Where do babies come from?", a common answer was "the stork". 

For those wondering exactly how storks became associated with pregnancy: The tradition apparently started in Victorian England. The White Stork was considered a symbol of happiness, fertility, and prosperity. Storks were known to nest on chimney tops in England, so the mythology of storks dropping baby humans down the chimney was made quite quickly. (It must also be mentioned that the surgical masks worn by early gynecologists gave them a vaguely storklike face. Best not to think about that too hard...)

The myth has mostly died down, to the point where TV is usually the only place you'll see kids who believe in "the stork". But the symbology of storks and babies has persisted to this day, where the image of a stork with a bundled baby hanging from its beak is still a symbol of pregnancy, childbirth, and babies.

Where the stork got the baby is rarely, if ever, mentioned.

The rival story that new babies were found under a gooseberry bush seems to have died out. Some guy named Xavier (not that one) did make a small fortune with the mythology of babies being grown from cabbages... but that's an adoption trope.

No real life examples, please; at least, not until we have evidence that Delivery Storks exist.

Examples of Delivery Stork include:

Advertising

  • An ad for birth control has one of these walk up to a woman, who dismisses it with a gesture and walks off to consider vacations, new houses, and other options she can pursue because she's not pregnant.
  • A cartoon stork with a Groucho Marx voice is a long-time pitchman for Vlasic brand pickles (working off the theme of pregnant women's craving for pickles).

Anime and Manga

  • Cited in Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service as the reasoning behind the business's name: instead of the white stork that brings new life, they're the black heron ("kurosagi" = "black heron") that takes away the dead.
  • Flying delivery storks are a regular gag in Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei. These have generally replaced aircraft in the background sky, and sound like them too.
    • In the same series there is a chapter based around white lies, in which Kafuka suggests changing white lies into reality. After Chiri overhears Majiru being told that a stork delivers babies, a news report about a stork literally delivering a missing baby is broadcasted.
  • The Code Geass parody comic "Legend of the Power Couple" (from the gag comic compilation Queen volume 1) has Suzaku and Euphemia believe in this as Character Exaggeration Played for Laughs. Suzaku believes in the Delivery Stork, while Euphemia believes that babies come from cabbage patches, and Lelouch, standing nearby, has a look on his face that's the non-verbal version of a Flat What. Which gets even flatter and what-ier when they hop in the Lancelot to search cabbage patches and stork habitats for babies.

Comic Books

  • In Brazilian comic Penadinho (known in English as Bug-a-booo), along with the comedic Grim Reaper, Dona Morte (known in English as Lady McDeath), there is a Stork who leads the reincarnation sector.
  • A Mad Magazine article from several decades back compared sexual knowledge among youth of different generations. In the '50s, they show a whitebread kid talking with a greaser.

Whitebread: But I thought the stork just brought the baby.
Greaser: Man, ain't you ever heard of sex? First, the man *whisper*, then the woman *whisper*, and then the two of them *whisper*.
Whitebread: Then what?
Greaser: Then the stork brings the baby.

    • A Don Martin cartoon has a couple of kids pondering the situation. One says "Charlie says the Stork brought us." The other shrugs "Ecch, Charlie, what does he know!" - then they both say "Hi, Charlie!" to a kid walking by with long skinny legs and neck, and a long pointy nose.
  • Joe Stork, purveyor of progeny to prince and proletarian, in Krazy Kat.
  • In the stories by Wilhelm Busch.
  • In Asterix and Son, Obelix still thinks storks deliver babies. In the final panel, Asterix tries to give him The Talk.
  • A baby Smurf is delivered by stork on a blue moon. Guess they really do only need one female after all.

Film

  • In the live-action movie of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Who babies (and the Grinch) are shown floating into Whoville in baskets. Oddly enough, one Who notes that his new son bears a strong resemblance to his wife's boss...
    • There's also a strange (even for him!) Dr. Seuss book and film entitled The Hoober-Bloob Highway in which new babies are sent from space down a magical spiral-shaped highway. Before they're sent down, a creature named Hoober-Bloob lets them choose what species they want to be born as, where they'd like to grow up, and then gives them a briefing to prepare them for life. This is undoubtly the most convoluted fictional answer to the question "Where do babies come from?" 
  • Used as the basis of an in-universe joke in the film Children of Men:

Jasper: So they call together all the great scientists, all the philosophers and thinkers, to ask the big question: why can't women have babies anymore? And all through the talk, there's one man in the corner who says nothing, just eats his dinner in a very loud fashion. And eventually the speakers get tired of the sound of his chewing, so they ask him from the podium, "If you deserve to be here, what do you think the answer is?". And he looks up, and says, "I don't know. But this stork is delicious!"

  • The "Every Sperm Is Sacred" scene in Monty Python's Meaning of Life starts with a stork dropping a baby down the chimney. Inside the house, it then falls out from under the mother's skirt. The beleaguered woman just glances up and asks one of the dozens of kids to pick it up.
  • The 1940 Disney film Dumbo starts out with storks delivering baby animals to their mothers while their circus is headquartered in Florida for the winter.
  • In the Pixar short that accompanied Up, Partly Cloudy, this trope was used, and the question as to where the storks obtained the babies they delivered was answered. They are made by clouds.
  • In another Pixar film, Cars, judging by a painting on one of the courtroom's walls, it's implied that cars and other vehicles reproduce by getting baby cars that roll down to Earth on a golden highway coming from an ivory and gold factory in Heaven.
  • Reversed in Flubber. Stork is Weebo's last word before dying.
  • Parodied in Addams Family Values. When Morticia is having a baby, one of the other kids in the waiting room with Wednesday and Pugsley explains her belief in the delivery stork. Wednesday deadpans, "Our parents are having a baby too. They had sex."
  • The animated film Storks.

Literature

  • In Piers Anthony's Xanth novels, babies really are brought by the stork, though thanks to something called the Adult Conspiracy, the parents still have to "summon the stork" (i.e. have sex. Sigh.) This only seems to apply to humanoids; centaurs apparently have offspring the mundane way, but they don't talk about it, and we're glad to comply. One villain is said (though possibly just rumored) to have proven too foul for the stork to handle; a basilisk is said to have delivered him.
  • Spoofed in the book Open Sesame by Tom Holt, in which a fairyland "family planning" division works by shooting storks out of the air while they're delivering.
  • The Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Crooked World takes place on a planet that's like a children's cartoon. They have no concept of sex, and Fitz (who's a little bit of a Lovable Sex Maniac) takes it upon himself to try explaining to the Girl of the Week. She only understands it in terms of making babies, which is done on this planet by writing a letter to the stork, and gets confused by his explanation and even more confused when Anji tries to explain his explanation, and decides Fitz would probably appreciate it if she wrote to the stork. He gets kidnapped and the stork has a devil of a time trying to find him, and by the time it finds him, it has dropped the baby into the jungle to be raised by friendly wolves and ends up delivering him a bomb instead, which he seems about as (un)happy about as he would have been about a baby. One of the villains who has kidnapped him comments, when the "baby" is dropped into his lap, that if he'd written to the stork in French, the stork wouldn't have known what he meant and wouldn't have delivered it.[1]
    • In the Novelization of The Twin Dilemma, the Sixth Doctor, temporarily under the delusion he's Sherlock Holmes, claims that as a child his parents told him the stork delivered babies, but he found this hard to believe as babies were common in London, but storks were rare. Upon hearing that a neighbour was about to have a baby, he observed the house closely, and didn't see a single stork. He did see a doctor entering with a black bag; obviously he had brought the baby.
  • Pat of Silver Bush, (by the author of Anne of Green Gables) features Judy spinning a homegrown yarn to Pat: Judy says she's going to find Pat's little brother or sister in the parsley bed.
    • The Anne of Green Gables books contain a reference to the stork, too. It was used as a euphemism for the birth of Anne's son, Jem. It was a bit oddly placed, since Anne had already given birth--albeit prematurely and the baby did not survive--and though it wasn't gory, it was plainly written.
  • Referenced in Superfudge, where Peter's grandmother is dismayed that his parents told four-year-old Fudge the truth about how the baby got inside Mommy's belly. In her day, this trope was the standard Lie To Children.
  • Parodied in "The Parenting Storks," a short story from David Sedaris' Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, with a stork who believes that baby storks are put into eggs by mice with magic pockets.
  • In To Kill a Mockingbird, Dill tells Scout that you get babies from an island where they are gathered like flowers. Scout, who had previously been told that babies are dropped down the chimney by God, is skeptical.
  • In the short story The Conjure Brother, the young girl protagonist rejects the idea that babies come from storks. Instead she believes her friend's theory, that to get a baby a mother must eat until she becomes extremely fat. Then she goes the hospital to lose the weight and from their she can choose a baby.

Live-Action TV

  • A first-season Mad TV sketch involved a couple going to a fertility clinic but not understanding what sex was. Turns out they "prayed to the magical stork." They were quite disgusted to learn the truth.
  • An early Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode has Buffy and Xander discovering Giles anxiously rehearsing asking Jenny out on a date, and proceed to give him unsolicited advice. Xander tells him "That business with the stork? It's just a smokescreen!" - Giles glares.
  • In the Glee episode "Sexy", Brittany thinks she's pregnant because a stork built its nest on top of her garage.

New Media

Newspaper Comics

  • One Calvin and Hobbes strip features Calvin hearing about and asking his father specifically about the stork. His father's response was that, yes, most babies were delivered by a stork, but Calvin was "unceremoniously dumped down the chimney by a big, hairy pterodactyl." Calvin is, needless to say, thrilled (to his father's lack of surprise).
    • In another comic, Calvin's dad informs him that kids come in kits (some assembly required) from Sears. Calvin is upset by this, but his father tells him not to worry as he was "a blue light special at K-mart. Almost as good, and a lot cheaper." Calvin is less than thrilled.
  • When Mafalda's mother warns her that a brother is coming, the children discuss a lot about the stork, including the fact that airplane delivery would be quicker.
  • In Hagar the Horrible, Hamlet asks his mother The Question. She answers that the stork brought him. He wants to know about his big sister, and Helga gives the same answer. Then he asks about his dad, and Helga says: "Four big storks."

Theater

  • In Once Upon a Mattress, the King gives The Talk to the Prince entirely in mime, but despite his best efforts, his son doesn't quite get it, and so, in the end he makes motions suggesting a stork. The Prince, however, finally puts it all together and realizes that "it isn't the stork at all."
  • In Spring Awakening (which takes place in 19th century Germany) Frau Bergmann is still trying to use this story with fourteen-year-old Wendla, who becomes frustrated and insists her mother finally explain to her what really happens.

Video Games

  • The set-up for Yoshi's Island involves an attempted kidnapping of Baby Mario and Baby Luigi while they're being delivered by the stork.
    • Yoshi's Island DS also uses the stork part, except it adds a few things such as a stop sign called a 'Stork Stop' where the stork allows Yoshi to switch which baby he's carrying on his back, storks carrying the babies back home after being rescued from Bowser's Castle and the stork itself in various cut scenes.
  • Word of God says this is how Pokémon eggs are delivered to the Day Care Center.
    • The Pokédex also implies that Celebi may be the stork.
  • Crusader Kings, a game about family lines and whole dynasties, uses these as a symbol to indicate that a character is, well, expecting.
  • Baby was delivered this way in the beginning of Guardian's Crusade until the stork was attacked and dropped it in a nearby village.
  • Pac-Man and Ms Pac-Man had a baby delivered to them by the stork.

Web Comics

Western Animation

  • Looney Tunes has featured storks delivering babies in dozens of cartoons. 
    • The 1933 short Shuffle Off To Buffalo uses this trope and also explains where they get the babies: they're made in a factory.
    • One famous sort-of-series during the 1950s involved a drunken stork, who would either be invited to drink with the new parents, or leave for his job directly from a roaring party. Since the stork would frequently be so smashed on the job, he'd deliver a baby (and at least once, a full-grown Bugs Bunny) to the wrong parents, with hilarious consequences.
    • Earlier, Bob Clampett parodied the concept with typical manic gusto in "Baby Bottleneck".
  • In the Disney cartoon, Lambert, The Sheepish Lion, the titular lion was supposed to go to Africa on a stork delivery (the stork for some reason, is actually the same stork that appeared in Dumbo), but is taken in by a ewe after none of the lambs delivered to flock choose her to be their mother.
  • Invoked by Angelica's parents on Rugrats when she asks them the question:

Charlotte: You see, to make a baby, mommies and daddies need to... well, they... they need to...
Drew: Call the stork!
Angelica: The stork?
Charlotte: The stork?
Drew: Yeah, you know that... big, ugly bird with... feathers?

  • Apparently Ned Flanders of The Simpsons fame has never told his sons about the Birds and the Bees, as when he and his children stumble upon the evolution display in the museum the kids ask if Maude was an ape, causing him to get flustered. He hurredly babbles something about God and a stork, resulting in the duo kneeling down and praying to the model stork in the corner. Ned is not amused.
    • Another episode revealed Maude and Ned Flanders made sure the doctor delivering their sons was actually called Dr. Stork, so technically they wouldn't be lying to their kids. 
  • Parodied in Family Guy of course. The woman is waiting in bed when a large stork arrives with his little bundle. When he opens it, however, it is just a red light bulb that he puts in her lamp. She confused asks, "where's my baby?", to which he replies, in the mellow voice of Michael Clarke Duncan, "Sweetie, you and me are gonna make the baby." Then he turns on porn music and struts over to the bed...
    • Subverted in another episode, where Stewie is taken away from the Griffins because Child Services mistakenly thinks they're bad parents. When Chris sees people getting babies from a man behind a window, he asks if this is where babies come from. Brian deadpans that, yes, it is, prompting Chris to point an accusatory finger at Lois and shout "You told me I came out of your vagina!"
      • To clarify on why Stewie was taken away, Meg was working as a waitress and spinning outlandish sob stories (like Stewie being her out-of-wedlock crack baby from an abusive boyfriend) to milk customers' sympathy for bigger tips, which is where Child Services gets involved. Right idea, wrong reason.
  • The Pixar short Partly Cloudy focuses on storks picking up babies to deliver; they're made by living clouds. The stork the short focuses on has the bad luck to work with a storm cloud who only makes dangerous animals. They're good friends, but the friendship gets really strained after the cloud makes a porcupine.
    • And then Mr. Stormcloud shows off his (unfinished) shark...
  • The Tex Avery cartoon Farm of Tomorrow has the narrator announce "we crossed a stork with a long-horn elk, to accommodate you impatient newlyweds who are in a hurry for a big family." The stork in question flies across the screen with a baby dangling from its bill. The stork also has a large rack of antlers, with a baby hanging from each point. See it here, at 5:30.
  • In Bonkers, Toon babies come from the stork, though Miranda's disbelief strongly implies this isn't true for Real babies.
  • Occurs humourously in Rocko's Modern Life. Rocko is driving Heffer and Filburt to Mrs. Hutchinson's birth in the hospital. While on the highway, they see the delivery stork's van (because all characters, including the stork, are Funny Animals) heading towards the hospital and race against the stork to reach the hospital first.
  • The early drafts of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer included a delivery stork, but after the sponsors requested a Celebrity Voice Actor (Burl Ives) narrate to increase appeal, the stork was cut to make room.
  • Subverted in a Bill Plympton short. A boy is told by his mother that he came from the stork. At which point, he imagines the stork coming to his house...and having sex with his mom. 
  • There was a Disney animated short involving an Imagine Spot by Mickey Mouse about getting married to Minnie Mouse. He's out watering the garden, and a Delivery Stork drops a baby down the chimney. Then more arrive and do the same. He rushes in with Pluto to find Minnie lying in their bed, surrounded by a large number of baby mice, much to Mickey's dismay. Perhaps this is actually the real reason why Mickey should've stayed an uncle.
  • In one episode of Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy, when Sarah and Jimmy ask the curious question, innocent, naive Ed shows he strongly believes in this trope.
  • Animated adaptations of The Cabbage Patch Kids gave them a stork caretaker named Colonel Casey.
  • Disney's Dinosaur actually did this with a Pterodactyl. Who apparently found Aladar's egg floating in a river after an Oviraptor accidentally dropped it while stealing it from Aladar's real mother.
  1. ↑ In case you're not up on your outdated euphemisms, a "French letter" means a condom.
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