Any of the woodland creatures that wanted a nut shelled would come to the squirrel and in exchange for a fair number of pine cones, a wonderfully shelled nut, perfect in its symmetry, and artfully extracted was produced.

The squirrels were never the richest creatures in the wood because they were artisans and craftsman first - monetary issues weren't a concern as long as they had enough pine cones to pay their bills.

Occasionally, a serious student, a lover of the craft would arrive on some squirrel's door step and the skill and experience would be passed on to the next generation. This was the way it was and life was good.

Then the rats appeared. At first it was just a few selling cut rate, commercially acceptable shelled nuts. Then more and more of them, until hardly any squirrel could compete and make a profit.

Now in one town, so many rats were selling commercially acceptable nuts that one industrious rat decided to practically give his nuts away, but produce so many every day, at marginal profit, that he still made extraordinarily high piles of pine cones. He even said, "It's not about the craft, it is all about the pine cones."

Working that hard gets old real fast, so that rat decided, why not get other rats to pay to learn his secrets of working fast and cheap. That way he wouldn't have to work so hard anymore.

I'm not sure what the end of the story will be, however, common sense would say if there is already too many rats shelling nuts and you train even more the price and quality of shelled nuts will bottom out at almost nothing. And the rats will move on to the next pine cone making scheme, while the squirrels will attempt bring the industry's quality and integrity back to what it once was.

The moral is: You can join the rat race, or slow down, do a quality job, ask a fair price and you'll find that your customers will go nuts for what you're producing.

Yours truly,

A former Rat, Chairman and Founder of Treadmill Anonymous

Put me down on the Squirrels side, buggar the Rats.