While we walked along the east side of Main Street on a Sunday morning not far back, my wife and I watched a hawk try, but fail, to lift off with a wounded pigeon clutched in its talons.

I don’t know if the hawk had attacked the pigeon, which looked as if it had a broken wing, or whether the pigeon was hit by a car and the hawk merely hoped to grab an easy breakfast.

(Although I doubt any pigeon, even a hale one, would greatly tax a hawk’s predatory skills.)

This tussle was the sort of dramatic, life-and-death wildlife struggle you see quite often on Discovery Channel.

Except on TV the dramatic, life-and-death struggle usually plays out on a savannah or in a rain forest rather than in the crosswalk on a town’s Main Street.

This hawk incident, I feel confident in claiming, is not typical of the avian scenes a person is likely to come across in the downtown of a major city. I concede, though, that the metropolises have got Baker City beat on pigeon population.

The episode on Main Street was an unusual, but relevant, example of why I prefer rural living to urban.

It pleases me to know that, unlike many millions of city dwellers, I don’t have to drive for hours to watch wildlife act in wild ways.

The notable exception to this, of course, is the coyote.

That crafty canine plunders the pampered cats of Bel Air and the various rodents of the sagebrush steppe with equal aplomb.

A recent telephone survey of 189 Baker City and Baker Valley residents, although it did not include a single question about hawks, pigeons or coyotes, shows that people who live here are, like me, generally happy with the place.

Baker City paid Orbis Group Inc., a local consulting firm, $5,000 to conduct the survey. Brian Cole, the former economic developer for Baker City and Baker County who left public employ and started Orbis Group, presented results to the Baker City Council last week.

It doesn’t surprise me that most of the respondents think Baker City is a good place to live. They live here, after all, even though they don’t have to.

Almost two-thirds 63 percent said Baker City is andquot;very desirable.andquot; Another 34.4 percent called the city andquot;somewhat desirable.andquot;

The survey has a margin of error of 7 percent, which means the andquot;very desirableandquot; contingent, statistically speaking, ranges from 56 percent to 70 percent. It’s more than half, regardless.

Among the results that did surprise me, albeit slightly, were responses to a question about which types of industrial growth people think are important to the city’s economy. Respondents rated each of seven categories as either not a priority, or a low, medium or high priority.

The seven categories are: agricultural production; light manufacturing; timber production; recreation and tourism; transportation; steel fabrication; and mining.

Agriculture topped the list of priorities predictable, considering that’s already the biggest sector of the county’s economy. Almost 67 percent of respondents rated agricultural production as a high priority. Only 1 percent deemed it a low priority or not a priority.

Yet mining, which was the county’s first industry, and for many years its most important, garnered just 21 percent support as a high priority. More than one-third of people rated mining as either a low priority (29.2 percent) or not a priority (7.9 percent).

Those figures are realistic, I suppose.

Mining is an expensive business, and a controversial one. You don’t just dig a pit in Oregon and start dousing the ore with cyanide solution.

Still, I would have guessed more local residents would endorse mining, even if they were motivated by nostalgia rather than by economic realities.

Timber production, for instance, has withered here just as mining once did. Yet timber is a high priority for almost 53 percent of respondents, and a low priority, or none at all, for just 15.5 percent.

Time probably has much to do with the differences between mining and timber.

It’s only been a dozen years since Ellingson Lumber Co. closed its Baker City mill, yet the Sumpter dredge went silent in 1953.

That was a while ago. Elvis wasn’t even famous then.

The most intriguing survey question in my estimation was this one: andquot;Do you agree or disagree with this statement: Growth should be restricted in order to protect the present way of life in Baker City.andquot;

Respondents could choose from among five answers: andquot;Strongly agreeandquot;; andquot;agreeandquot;; andquot;disagreeandquot;; andquot;strongly disagreeandquot;; or andquot;no opinion.andquot;

Now a lawyer might object to that question as being of the andquot;leadingandquot; variety.

The wording strongly implies that restricting growth would, without any doubt, protect the present way of life in Baker City.

What I’d like to know is how many people think that restricting growth would help to keep Baker City the way it is.

That question wasn’t on the survey, though.

As for the question that was, of the 183 people who answered the query about controlling growth, 56 that’s 30.6 percent said they agree that growth should be restricted. Ten more people 5.5 percent strongly agree.

A plurality of respondents 45.4 percent said they disagree with the statement about growth, and another 9.8 percent said they strongly disagree.

You could tout those results as proof that a significant percentage of local residents 36 percent want to control the city’s growth to preserve its quality of life.

Or, if you’re of a different persuasion, you could assert that a majority of people 55 percent don’t want to restrict growth.

Statistically speaking, both claims are correct.

I’m not sure, though, that either claim gets to the root of the matter.

I doubt any survey could.

What I am sure about is that I’ve never heard anyone, at least publicly, argue that Baker City ought to model itself after Bend.

I suppose it’s progress of a sort if we can all agree on what we don’t want for Baker City.

Deciding what we do want well, the path to that place is a twisty one, steep and narrow and fraught with trouble.

It may be that we’ll never get there.

While we’re traveling, though, I’ll suggest one other matter about which I hope each of us can concur:

May Baker City always remain a place where hawks can hunt.

Sometimes even on Main Street.

Jayson Jacoby is the editor of the Baker City Herald.