A rat through the crack

A rat looked through a crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package. “What food might it contain?” he wondered. He was aghast to discover that it contained a rat trap instead.

Retreating to the farmyard, the rat proclaimed a warning. “There is a rat trap in the house! A rat trap in the house!” he announced.

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

The rat turned to the pig and told him, “There is a rat trap in the house! A rat trap in the house!”

“I am so very sorry, Mr. Rat,” sympathized the pig, “But there is nothing I can do about it but pray. Be assured that you are in my prayers.”

The rat turned to the cow. The cow said, “Like, wow, Mr. Rat, a rat trap! I am in grave danger… Duh?!”

So the rat returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer’s rat trap alone. That night, a sound was heard throughout the house, like that of a rat trap that has caught a prey. The farmer’s wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she didn’t see that it was the tail of an enormous snake the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer’s wife.

The farmer rushed her to the hospital. When she returned home, she was still running 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 friends and neighbors came to sit with her round-the-clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig.

The farmer’s wife didn’t get well. She eventually died. So many people came for her funeral that the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide meat for all of them to eat.

When there’s a rat trap in the house, the whole farmyard is at risk! So next time you hear somebody is facing a problem, don’t think that it doesn’t concern you.

“It’s his problem not mine.”

“I don’t care… It doesn’t concern me.”

I still hear people say such things in the work place. How wrong they are! You’ve got to be dumb or just plain selfish to think that a teammate’s problem is of no consequence to you. In the workplace, everybody’s in the same boat. Even if you’re the best ship captain in the world, if your ship was the Titanic, you’d still sink with it.

Learn to play as a team member. When you go to your work place in the morning, make sure to park your ego on the parking lot. Don’t bring it into the office building.

And learn a lesson or two from bees on the subject of teamwork. Charles Dygert, in his book Success is a Team Effort, tells the fascinating story of how bees survive the bitter cold of winter through a system of cooperation. Says Dygert, “Bees live through cold temperatures by a strategy of committing to a common cause through mutual aid. They form into a ball and keep up what amounts to a non-stop motion that resembles a dance. To accomplish their goal, the bees change places; those that have been on the cold outer edge move to the center, and those at the center move out. If those in the middle insisted on staying there – keeping the others at the edges – they would all perish.”

The survival of nations, businesses, families and individuals hinges on how people apply the strategies of working together. We must see ourselves as part of a crew, not rowing the vessel alone. As Zig Ziglar has observed, “The people with whom you share your goals will play a major part in whether or not you reach those goals.” 

And what does the Bible have to say about the essence of teamwork? Consider others better than yourself, and then do to others as if you were the others – that’s the gist of it.

1 Thanks to Walter Smithfor today’s Illustration.

(Thank you to all those who attended the recently-concluded Developing The Leader Within You! We had a full house during the two-day seminar. The next run will be on Oct. 16-17 at the EDSA Shangri-La Hotel, and is now open for early registration! For further inquiries, contact Hannah at 09228980196, or call 632-6310658 or 6310660 for more details.)