Everyone knows, from Aesop and Horace, the story of the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, although they fail to tell us that all food comes from the country (the farm).

The Country Mouse lives a good life, but in the city is threatened by the cats and dogs. Horace was a poet and a farmer, who loved his farm and fled the city.

The City Mouse, the City People, think they are the center of the world, surrounded by the riches of the world. This is, in part, true, as markets and merchants bring them goods from everywhere (that is, from farms everywhere).

However, City People live in a bubble. Wherever they go, they bring with them worldwide the same cast of characters. Instead of the splendid local birds and animals which fill the farms, the forests, and the jungles, wherever you find City Folk, you find…. Black and Norway Rats (well known carriers of disease), House Mice, domestic cats (which eat millions of native birds) and dogs (which chase away local creatures — deaths and injuries from dogs are amazingly high), English Sparrows, Starlings, Pigeons (aka flying rats), cockroaches, fleas, bedbugs, and lice.

If we are known by the company we keep, the City Folk keep, take with them everywhere, bad company. No wonder that, given a chance, City Folk flee to the country, to the fields, the hills, the mountains, the beach. They are fleeing from themselves.

So when, in times of disease, people are advised to keep “social distance,” the Country Folk, the Farmers, have the advantage. When alone, they are surrounded by native beauty—birds, animals, plants. The City Folk are surrounded by their usual friends whom, even in good times, they wish to flee.

For those who need the moral drawn, the City Mice live in Seattle, Portland and Eugene. They dress elegantly, in hiking clothes bought from REI and Norm Thompson, the men with scruffy two-day-old beards carefully cultivated so they can look rough and rustic. On beautiful Saturday and Sunday afternoons, they can often be found in the malls and REI, rather than in the woods.

They think the world revolves around them, and forget that food comes from the forests and the farms.

Alan Gallagher

Canby, Ore.