Who will bell the Cobra?

By Patrick Sikana

Once upon a time, there lived a litre of mice called the cartel. These mice used to pillage in a grocer’s shop. They ate the fresh, tasty wheat, rice, bread, cheese and biscuits that were kept in the shop. They were having a great time and living easy, comfortable lives, growing fatter day by day.

But the grocer was concerned about the losses that he was suffering because of the damage done to his stock by the mice. So, he thought of a solution and employed a deadly Cobra to keep watch in his shop.

From that day onwards, the Cobra began to strike the mice every day. The mice were terrified of even stepping out of their holes. They could not reach the food anymore. This was a great cause of worry for them.

So the cartel had a general assembly to consider what plans they could devise to outwit their common enemy, the spitting Cobra. Fled said the best way is to flee each time we see the Cobra hissing his way towards us. That way, we will never pay back what we owe. “No,” said Quinter, the chief mouse. “That is not a good solution, for it will wear us out to run each time we see the Serpent.”

And so the debate to nullify the threat a marauding Cobra went on and on until young Mutengo stood up and shouted “Eureka! Eureka! Eureka!”He had a proposal to make, which he thought would meet the case.

“You will all agree,” said he, “that our chief danger consists in the sly and treacherous manner in which the Cobra approaches us. Now, if we could receive some signal of its approach, we could easily escape from its venom. I venture, therefore, to propose that a small bell be procured, and attached by a ribbon round the neck of the Cobra. By this means we shall always know when it was up to something, and could easily slip out of range when it’s about to strike.”

This proposal met with general applause, until old Quinter got up and Asked: “That is all very well, but who will bell the Cobra?” The cartel looked at one another and nobody spoke. Then Fled said, “I have an idea! Forge works very close to the Cobra, we can make him our spy and one day he can tie the bell around the Cobra’s neck.”

So it was. Forge went ahead and belled the Cobra. For a while the cartel enjoyed relative peace. They waxed exceedingly powerful. Their whimsical journey seemed faultless. The Cobra had disappeared. They even treasonously surmised that the Cobra was already dead, or incapacitated, at best. They ate everything in the kitchen, including the menu itself. They celebrated their ingenuity, teamwork and wily scheme. They didn’t know that the Cobra was just suffering from intermittent amnesia.

Then one day, suddenly, without warning the Cobra, recuperating from its temporary loss of memory, peeled off its skin, rose up and sunk its poisonous fangs into Quinter’s unsuspecting back! The bite was fatal. Both the cartel, and the shop owner lived in fear ever after.

Where did the cartel go wrong? What happened to the bell? Well, it appears that the cartel was so intoxicated with the whiff of power that they forgot that the Cobra has no real neck to hand a bell on. Its slippery skin and emaciated frame provided the perfect makings for it to slip through the bell and execute one of its most celebrated attacks!The question should not have been “who will bell the Cobra?” It should have been how shall we bell the Cobra?

What’s the moral to the cartel?1) It is easy to suggest impossible remedies that are easier said than done. 2) There is a fundamental difference between ideas and their feasibility. 3)Be sure your sin will find you out.

What’s the moral to the shop owner? The next time you have trouble with mice in your shop, try a cat, not a cobra. Every snake-charmer has one story: a snake doesn’t know the difference between friend and foe. It’ll bite both.