Missing the forest for the trees: Don't shoot the messenger
By Shandana Minhas
Sunday, September 21, 2008
The family living in house No.7 has rats in the cellar. The rats eat their food, gnaw on their furniture, pee on the dishes, abduct their children, and generally make a nuisance of themselves. But the family tolerates them, because it's against their culture to refuse hospitality to other living creatures. Having lucked out with their choice of host, the rats get bolder and start travelling outwards, in time striking at others, even the big house on the hill at the top of the road, house No.1. The family living in house No.1 asks house No.7 to exercise a little bit of pest control. House No.7 puts down a trap or two, using cotton wool as bait instead of cheese because, well, frankly there isn't enough cheese to go around. House No.1 demands more. House No.7 says you didn't say please. House No.1 sends in its own exterminators. House No.7 cocks and loads. In no time, 1 and 7 are squabbling, then shoving, then launching projectiles at each other. And as the squabble erupts into a full blown conflagration, the rats scurry merrily back to their cellar, where they are certain to survive any potential nuclear holocaust, chuckling to themselves and squeaking 'a plague on both your houses' into the wind.
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