I'm a Country Mouse

Once upon a time there was a country mouse and city mouse. One day the city mouse decided to visit her cousin in the country, so she took the long walk through the fields and forests to finally reach the cottage of the country mouse, where her cousin welcomed her with simple country fare. After a short time, feeling bored and disenchanted with the quiet, simple life of the country mouse, the city mouse invited her cousin to join her in a trip to the city where she would see life in all it's wonder and experience the great feasts and excitement of the city. Leaving together they traveled the forests and fields to the city where they finally reached the city mouse's home. Because they were hungry and tired from traveling, the two mice decided to go straight to the dining room and find something to eat. A great banquet was indeed waiting for them, but as they had only begun to feast, a gigantic cat came bounding into the room and onto the table. The city mouse grabbed her cousin and ran for cover. Desperately frightened and upset, the country mouse began to cry. “Why have you brought me here where there are such dangers? Take me back to my home in the country where I can enjoy a quiet meal by myself.”

I am a country mouse. I love the peace and quiet. As I write, I can hear more birds than cars, can see more trees than houses, and can smell more flowers than fumes. We eat simply, drive slowly, take long walks, watch sunsets, listen to sprinklers and talk to each other. We have a lot of animals to take care of, so we do chores, morning and evening which keeps us home a lot. We sing when we are happy and cry together when we are sad. When we are sick, we stay at home for a day until we feel better or the family doctor might be called in on special occasions. There's nothing fancy about our life, but we like it.

I know a lot of city mice. They say that they love the noise. While I speak they are most likely sitting in their car with an ipod plugged into one ear, booming out their favorite tunes, while a cell phone is plugged into their other ear so they can take important phone calls, which they seem to get constantly. No doubt they are racing through traffic, which is probably backed up at least a mile, to get to an important appointment on the other side of town. Because of the traffic, it might take them half an hour to travel five miles across town. Every two or three blocks in between stop lights they will hurry as fast as they can, only to slam on the breaks at the next light where they wait and wait and wait. Honking at other drivers is common and saying unspeakable things about other drivers is even more common. There is no such thing as a speed limit. One simply has to drive the same speed as every one else or he gets killed.

In the city, there is always something going on: a new restaurant to try, the new release to watch at the theater, a big name giving a concert, a new mall to shop. With all this excitement going on, who has time to sit at home and do nothing? Still, with all the outlets for entertainment the city mouse is frequently bored with life and often goes looking for 'something different'. So he might travel to another city to see what he can see. After many years of living like this, he finds that he is not well but the city offers a host of doctors and specialists to treat his every ache and pain. He spends much time in search of the “right” doctor. He takes fancy medicine and has fancy unpronounceable diseases.

Clearly, these two mice are different. They prize different, even opposite things in their lives and as a result they grow to be vastly different in the end. One problem that can arise from this difference is that when the two mice are governed by one body, that body should be made up of equal parts of each different group, right? However, this is seldom if ever the case. So, theoretically, we might have the city mice telling country mice that they are entitled to have a policeman on every corner, an ambulance on every block, a fire station on every street, a specialist for every child, GPS for every car, food for every table, subsidies for every household and a license for every animal. The country mouse would laugh and say something like, “But I don't care about all those things. Just let me live my life the way I choose!” To which the city mice might reply, “Sorry, it's the law.” So, what's a country mouse to do?