City Mouse, Country Mouse

I'm going back to my plow.

Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash

I recently returned to freelance work at home, serving clients via remote work with the flexibility to maintain a large garden again. Our garden plot has lain fallow for four years because our lives just got too busy and demanding to tend to it. Fences need mending, perennials need mulch, and I have forgotten where I moved my horseradish plants.

This transition makes me think about the story of the country mouse and the city mouse. "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse" is one of Aesop's Fables. In the original tale, a town mouse visits his cousin in the country. The country mouse offers a meal of simple country cuisine, at which the visitor scoffs and invites country mouse back to the city for a taste of the "fine life." They travel to town and the two cousins dine on fine foods.

But their rich feast is interrupted by a cat which forces the rodent cousins to abandon their meal and run for safety. Town mouse tells country mouse that the cat killed his mother and father and that he is frequently the target of attacks. After hearing this, the country mouse decides to return home, preferring security to opulence.

(How ironic that our county seat, where I have worked for eight years, is overrun with stray cats…)

I don’t know how long the country mouse spent visiting the city, but I wonder if, upon his return home, he had to tackle a list of repairs and maintenance for all that had gone feral in his absence. I wonder if he shed fancy shoes and slipped back into his garden clogs - if he folded up business attire and pulled out his stained t-shirts and ripped jeans.

I wonder if, back in the city, the cousin is still running from cats.

For the city mouse, the country mouse’s life makes no sense. City mouse has no clue that a garden is work from spring through fall. No sense of the difference between a store-bought tomato and one fresh from the garden. No ability to sit without fear on the back porch and watch the grass grow, hear the birds sing, or nap in the shade during the heat of the day.

City mouse has no connection to nature, the place where country mouse finds his solace.

And yet, country mouse was tempted by the finer things. Was convinced to leave his country home, and travel far for finer things, with no awareness of the dangers of town. Cats, mouse traps, cooks with brooms. I can imagine him thinking, “Wait - what? Traps? Cats? You could have at least warned me. I thought you said this was the better life!”

Like the country mouse, I found it hard to navigate the traps and cats of “a career.” Politics, inflation, gossip, lack of accountability, secrets hidden here and there. The poor country mouse didn’t even know what a mouse trap was.

Of course, this makes me think of another parable, the one shared in the book, “Who Moved My Cheese?”

Who moved my cheese revolves around the four characters who live in a maze. All of them love cheese. When the cheese disappears, Sniff and Scurry, two simple mice, head into the maze to search for new cheese while Hem and Haw, tiny complicated people, feel betrayed and start complaining that someone had stolen their cheese from them. They can’t believe someone just dared move their cheese. Haw covers his ears and closes his eyes, blocking the truth out. Hem feels betrayed. Hungry and shocked, they come back home. Hem and Haw wasted their time and energy believing that their old cheese will return.

The pandemic moved a lot of cheese. And for many, like me, that old cheese is just gone. My cheese moved from town back to the farm. I no longer have the inclination to dodge cats and traps, especially when remote work allows me to avoid them completely.

Gardens need to be tended. Homes need to be tended to. Children, lives, and souls need tending. We have to apply ourselves to the care of these things. If all we do is exist from paycheck to paycheck and run from cats, with no time to actually enjoy life and grow, we’re nothing but mice running on a spinning wheel. And cheese — well, if it’s not in a trap, there’s no guarantee it will always be there.

Giving up a regular paycheck may not seem an obvious path to security, but the time made available — if applied — will result in a pantry of full canning jars, a painted kitchen ceiling, the removal of invasive Autumn Olive bushes, etc., etc., etc. And sitting in the garden, talking to my sprouting peas, feeling the sun on my shoulders and the breeze on my skin, I do feel safe and comforted, and home.

Besides, I know how to make my own bread, and if I need to, how to make cheese. No cats or traps included.