When it became apparent that Covid-19 was nothing to mess with, some people ignored its warning signs. One went so far as to host a party simply to prove he was fearless in the wake of this pandemic. Others, knowing they should be quarantined, conducted business as usual. Selfishness at its finest.

It reminds me of a story I heard years ago. It began with a mouse looking through a crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package; what food might it contain? He was aghast to discover that it was a mousetrap! Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning, “There is a mousetrap in the house, there is a mousetrap in the house!”

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, “Mr. Mouse, I can tell you this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me; I cannot be bothered by it.”

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, “There is a mousetrap in the house.” “I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse,” sympathized the pig, “but there is nothing I can do about it but pray; be assured that you are in my prayers.”

The mouse turned to the cow who replied, “Like wow Mr. Mouse, a mousetrap; am I in grave danger? So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected to face the farmer’s mousetrap alone.

That very night the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey was heard throughout the house. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see that it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer’s wife.

The farmer rushed her to the hospital. She returned home with a fever. Now, everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup’s main ingredient.

His wife’s sickness continued so that friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer’s wife did not get well. In fact, she died, and so many people came for her funeral, the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide meat for all of them to eat.

I think this parable is one we all should consider. In Matthew 7:12 Jesus states, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” The moral of the story is this: the next time you hear that someone is facing a problem and think that it does not concern you, remember that when the least of us is threatened, we are all at risk.