A mouse looked through a crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package: What food might it contain? He was astonished to discover that it was a mouse trap! Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse declared the warning, "There is a mouse trap in the house, there is a mouse trap 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 mouse trap in the house." "I am so 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, "A mouse trap, am I in grave danger, huh?" So the mouse returned to the house, head down and depressed to face the farmer's mouse trap alone. That very night a sound was heard throughout the house, like the sound of a mouse trap catching its prey. The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see that it was an evil 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 knew to treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main _ . 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. So 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. We may infer that the passage is most probably a   _  .
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