Dear Mr Coleridge,
I am writing this letter to express my distaste at the sentiments shown by you regarding the shooting of albatrosses in your poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". In my opinion, these unsightly beasts not only deserve to, but should be shot upon first sight if possible. I ask you Mr Coleridge have you ever taken the time to look one of these filthy animals in the eye? If you had, I feel sure you would experience the same sense of utter, unparalleled disgust as I do upon looking upon them as they waft their fetid stench of fish and miles and miles of sea upon me. These creatures taunt us, Mr Coleridge, and for this treachery deserve to be treated no better than a repugnant cancer upon the ocean. They must be expunged from our memories, their skeletons exhumed and cast into the fiery pits of hell.
Also I wish to prove to you that the shooting of these grotesque harpies of the Pacific is not in fact bad luck. When I was but a small child my father shot such an animal, all that year I achieved good grades in Geography class. Admittedly I had a penchant for geography before the shooting of said bird, yet my point still stands. Furthermore my wife accepted my proposal of marriage after I displayed my brute strength by shooting an albatross from out cliff top house.
In addition to a public retraction of your statements on albatross shooting I also wish you to make necessary revisions to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". However since you are hundreds of years dead I have made the required changes myself.
The poem reads the same up until the shooting incident, which now reads thus:
`God save thee, ancient Mariner !
From the fiends, that plague thee thus !--
Why look'st thou so ?'--With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS.
The rest of the journey fared well.
THE END
I care not if these amendments please you. If you wished me to take your opinions into account you should not have published such frankly disgusting views on albatross preservation.
Yours furiously
Dr. Albert Fulmar
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