Description

Filthy Rich.While traveling through the desert Pinocchio is picked up by a giant vulture, who quickly drops him after realising he isn't edible, and eventually arrives at a tent thirsty and exhausted, there he uses one of the diamonds he was given to buy water and a camel to take him to the nearest city (along with a large number of gold coins as change). Once in the city he finds a hotel to stay in where he meets a baby vulture who was captured from the desert and offers to teach Pinocchio how to behave like a rich man in exchange for his freedom. However while following the vulture's vague advise the puppet behaves badly; acting smug with others, embarrassing his servants and hangers-on for his own amusement, buying a house that was going to be used as an orphanage just as the transaction was about to be completed, ignoring the cricket's warning about the dangers of his new lifestyle, putting off his promise to set the vulture free, and refusing to speak with a traveling carpenter who comes to his house (not realising it's his father). However, Sneeroff soon finds Pinocchio's house and breaks into it to steal his diamonds, in the resulting ruckus the house catches fire and Sneeroff escapes with the diamonds, while Pinocchio panics and ends up leaving the baby vulture behind when he flees the burning house. Elsewhere Geppetto sees the house burning, upon overhearing two men talking about the owner he realises that it's Pinocchio and runs to save him. Meanwhile Pinocchio has escaped the fire but finds that his former servants will no longer obey him and the orphans from before throw rocks at him; realising how badly he's behaved and that nobody in the city genuinely cares about him he begins to call for his father who hears and runs to him. However their reunion is cut off by the giant vulture from before who was the father of the baby vulture Pinocchio met and drops the puppet down a mountain, hoping to destroy him in retaliation for letting his child die.