Once there was a rich and prominent Lady.  She prided herself on her massive and quite lovely garden. This garden was full of all varieties of blossoms, carefully arranged and very pleasing to the eye.

  The garden was the Lady's pride and joy.  So it was with great horror and disgust when one day she found a floppy munching upon her prize blooms!
 
 
 

  "This will not do!", declared the Lady.  She ordered one of her many peasant gardeners to take up his scythe and chop the little intruder into tiny bits. The peasant, however, swung the scythe with less than masterful strokes.  Indeed, he tore up many plants in his hunt for the elusive rodent.  The peasant was given a lashing for his threshing of the garden and set to work replanting.
 
 
 

  The Lady decided to hire someone more competent to rid her precious garden of this fuzzy interloper... without the wanton damage.

  A rogue was hired, and set to his task.  He laid many traps around the garden, all invisible to the eye and guaranteed, he claimed, to catch the floppy with no damage to her plants.  Days passed, but the floppy did not tread upon a single one of the rogue's traps.

  A visiting noble, however, was not so clever and nimble as a floppy.  The rogue was handed over to him, for the noble to exact his retribution for the loss of several of his toes.
 

  The Lady next hired a skilled warrior.  He boasted that no mere rodent could last long against him.  With his skilled blade he would easily kill the unwelcome guest without touching a single leaf of the garden.  Welcome words to the Lady's ears.

  Night came, and the floppy hopped merrily into the Lady's garden... And soon met with razor sharp steel.  The floppy skewered on his sword, the warrior smiled.  He had but to wait for daybreak to present the body of the floppy as proof of his victory to the Lady.
 

  Day came, and the Lady was ecstatic with the warrior's news.  The floppy was smitten!  This was call for celebration!

  That eve, the Lady, warrior, and several guests feasted on Roast Floppy in the garden.  The party was going well, until a furry little head popped up out of the garden, curious as to the commotion.  The warrior's jaw dropped.  The Lady's temper snapped, and the guards gave the warrior the bum's rush out of their Lady's land for trying to deceive her.
 
 
 
 
 

  Next the Lady hired an eldritch priest, to rid her divine garden of this unholy menace.  The priest let loose a mighty curse upon the floppy, to drive it from the garden.  But all that the curse managed to do was to make the sweet fragrance of the garden turn sour.  Very sour.  The Lady gasped orders to her guards between gulps of stench-filled air.  The priest was shipped off to parts unknown, to convert some heathens in some remote land.
 
 
 
 
 

  Tired of petty tricks, the Lady hired a mighty wizard.  The pure magic at his disposal could surely work miracles.  As the Lady was explaining the problem to the wizard, the floppy poked its head up above the foliage, and the wizard instinctively let loose a barrage of fireballs, cackling mad laughter as he loosed his full arcane power.  The Lady, shocked and quite upset, ran the wizard through with her own regal blade.  On the positive side, the sour-smelling flowers cursed by the priest were most of what roasted in the once-proud garden.
 
 
 
 
 

  Having tried all other options, the Lady called upon a monk to rid her garden of this unnatural pest.  She was sure this monk would tromp all over her prize flower beds, but she had no other choices left.  The Lady explained the problem to the monk, who was merely looking about the garden with a bemused smile.  While she was still explaining the lengths of her troubles, the monk up and wandered off!  He walked towards a nearby woodland, and disappeared in the trees.

  The next day, the monk returned to the Lady, and told her that the floppy would trouble her garden no more.  Being less than trustful at this point of such tales, the lady asked the monk to explain himself.  He presented no carcass to her, no evidence at all of the demise of the foul rodent.  How could the monk be so sure that the floppy had met its end?  The monk bade her to follow him, and they went together to the edge of the woods, where the monk revealed a smaller garden, with only one or two varieties of flowers, in great abundance.

  This garden, the monk explained, contained the flowers the floppies preferred to eat, and was closer to their home.  They would not go further than they needed if food was easier obtained here.  Indeed, as they stared at the small garden, several floppies poked their heads up above the blooms, then returned to their dining.

  The Lady was amazed.  The monk had taught her a lesson she would not soon forget:

 Death only begets death.  Life begets life.