One day, a friend of the Holy Man visited him. After they had eaten, they started chatting. The Holy Man could not concentrate and kept tapping on the ground with a stick to scare the Mouse away.
The friend asked, “What are you doing? Why don’t you listen to me, properly?” “Excuse me!” said the Holy Man. “It’s just that dreadful Mouse! He eats away whatever food I manage to save.” Wondering how the Mouse could jump so high, the friend said, “The Mouse must have put aside a lot of food, which must give him extraordinary energy to jump so high.”
They then, dug and found the hoard of food that the Mouse had gathered and took it away.
The Mouse returned and found his hoard of food missing, and was very sad. He lost all interest in stealing food from the Holy Man’s bowl.
Moral: Identify the enemy’s source of strength to defeat him.