The warden of a wood received instructions to preserve its population of door-mice. The numbers of door-mice had recently dwindled in the wood because a fox enjoyed eating them. The warden's purpose was to preserve a balance between all the forest’s life-forms, so she decided on a solution which she hoped would both defend the door-mice without killing or banishing the two foxes. To this end, she constructed an elaborate wooden sanctuary set high up in the trees where the mice could retreat if pursued by the fox. Unfortunately, the warden was to be disappointed by her achievement. The new asylum only served to create a different set of problems as its manner of construction did not suit the natural tendencies of the door-mice. The warden had forgotten that a door-mouse rarely out-waits its predators by taking refuge in a safe space. Instead, as its name suggests, it typically flees when threatened, taking any available opening or passageway. The architecture of the warden's constructions narrowed the options for escape and seemed to channel the mice directly into the jaws of the waiting fox. Where the fox soon grasped how to exploit the structural weaknesses in the mouse sanctuary, the mice never learnt how to utilise its strengths. Observers of the warden's efforts might conclude that the door-mouse actively seeks its own destruction.
