PrintDangerous Appetites
I didn't have any cheese so I used margarine on the mouse-trap! I figured it was the same colour and how would a dumb mouse pick the difference anyway?! I nicknamed the little critter "Andy" when he visited my office for the third or fourth time and, about then, I decided that Andy just had to go! I set the trap in my office and waited for the demise of another "church mouse".
Even while I watched, the bold little beggar found his way to the trap and proceeded to demolish the bait.The trap did not trigger! So I reset the trap on what I thought was a hair-trigger. The scene was repeated with Andy doing everything to that trap short of jumping up and down on it! It still did not trigger. Well, they say 'third time lucky' so the whole procedure was again repeated with the same fattening success for Andy and the same dismal failure for me. Perhaps Andy had also heard about 'third time lucky'?!
As this life drama unfolded, I couldn't help but think about that little guy's appetite and how close it brought him to a swift death. For me it was a logical extension to think about some human parallels and the kinds of appetites that can be very destructive for us. I'm not so much thinking about food (although gluttony has its own negative consequences), but about those insatiable appetites that relate to the pursuit of wealth, possessions, power, status, prestige, lust etc. Any or all of these can become so all-consuming in their demands that we may well find ourselves going to destructive and deadly extremes to satisfy them.
All of those appetites above are addictive by nature and subject to the law of diminishing returns. The more we get the more we want. As someone wisely observed, 'Enough is always just a little more'. Andy is probably off in a corner somewhere bloated on margarine! I'm in the process of fine-tuning my mouse-trap. He has avoided the ultimate price of his appetite thus far. But I have a feeling it will be the death of him yet.
