Originally Posted by ash90

Yesterday I was reading the daily Kawish and an article got my attention. The article is written by Mr. Wussatullah Khan. It is based on a story. I have tried to reproduce here.

Mousetrap

Long time ago in a countryside village lived poor farmer. He lived in abject poverty. His family depended on monsoon rain to raise family. He was so poor that he had kept his grains in a safe place. The farmer had a cow, a goat and a hen to his possession.

A mouse in his house also had lived there and dependent on their preserved livelihood they would make. The mouse used to fetch whatever it could from the house. The poor little fellow had given a tough time to the wife of the poor farmer. On her daily complains the farmer had brought a new mouse trap from the nearby town on barter.

When the mouse saw that trap came running down to the hen and started wailing and said twice, “beware there is a mouse trap in the house!”. The cold reply from the hen was that it had nothing to worry and warned the poor mouse to take care of itself from then on. The unhappy mouse came running down to the goat and told the same story. Again the taciturn reply made the poor mouse even further upset. Then it went down to the calm creature of the house, a cow. The cow was busy chewing the cud. It gave a sympathetic look to the frustrated mouse by wagging her tail. The unfortunate mouse told what it said to others. The cow said “Look fellow, I can only pray for you as it really makes no difference to my life.” The poor mouse returned to its abode dejected.

That late night, after hearing a noise, the wife of the farmer woke up. She thought that it must have been because of that new mousetrap. She went there and took that trap. As it was complete darkness she could not see. She was bitten by a snake. The tail of the snake was trapped in the newly bought mousetrap. She started crying for the help. The poor farmer came rushing and upon hearing her wife about the snake he took her to the medicine man of the nearby village. The medicine man understanding the grief told the poor farmer that he must not worry and just feed her well with some good soup.

Next morning the farmer took his hen and made good soup and meal for the family. After few days the health of his wife weakened and her family relatives started visiting her. The farmer had no choice but to take the goat to the butcher for the meal of the visitors. After a fortnight the poor lady died. The people came from everywhere to console the poor farmer. Therefore the cow became the food of those console makers.

The poor little mouse kept watching the sad events and kept saying “I was telling everyone about the mousetrap!”

Moral of the story is “Where there is a smoke there’s a fire.”