mouse I murdered

So much happens every day.

This happened one day. I set an ingenius trap to catch a mouse. You set one bowl with its lip resting on a round cracker or peanut. You set a second larger bowl with its lip rest on the round edge of the first bowl, just so. When the mouse takes the peanut it releases the larger bowl and catches the mouse.  Then you take the trapped mouse to the forest and bid it adieu. A better mouse trap has not been invented. Or so I thought.

Well, on this particular morning,I noticed the trap had been sprung. So I looked down and saw that the larger bowl had snapped the poor mouse's neck. His little eyes seemed to be looking up at me in disbelief, even though it was surely dead. My breakfast didn't taste right after that.

But it got worse. Because on the way to school I was listening to a lecture on Coleridge to prep for teaching a class on The Rime of The Ancient Mariner. And Richard Holmes, the great Coleridge biographer, read from a letter by Coleridge which made a comment on how cruel we are to invite a mouse to dinner, only to chop of its head. (I thought of that speech in Macbeth about the double crime of killing the king after inviting him into your home.)

If that wasn't bad enough, when I was teaching the kids the ancient Mariner I came to these passages, concerning the death of 200 men on the ship all stemming (poetically) from the senseless death of the albatross.

One after one, by the star-dogged Moon, 

Too quick for groan or sigh, 

Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, 

And cursed me with his eye. 

The many men, so beautiful! 

And they all dead did lie: 

And a thousand thousand slimy things 

Lived on; and so did I. 

I looked upon the rotting sea, 

And drew my eyes away; 

I looked upon the rotting deck, 

And there the dead men lay. 

I looked to heaven, and tried to pray; 

But or ever a prayer had gusht, 

A wicked whisper came, and made 

My heart as dry as dust. 

I closed my lids, and kept them close, 

And the balls like pulses beat; 

For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky 

Lay dead like a load on my weary eye, 

And the dead were at my feet. 

The cold sweat melted from their limbs, 

Nor rot nor reek did they: 

The look with which they looked on me 

Had never passed away. 

 And I couldn't help but wonder if the look of that mouse that I had killed with carelessness that morning would ever pass away.

After we finished the poem I showed the kids pictures of decomposing albatrosses, their guts filled with brightly colored plastic pieces. I told them this poem was, in a way, prophetic. Millions of albatrosses are being killed by plastic garbage. I asked them, who killed these albatrosses? Which of us are carrying the burden of these murders around our neck? And what ultimate price will we have to pay? 

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell 

To thee, thou Wedding-Guest! 

He prayeth well, who loveth well 

Both man and bird and beast. 

He prayeth best, who loveth best 

All things both great and small; 

For the dear God who loveth us, 

He made and loveth all.