Fishing for cell phones

It feels a little post-apocalyptic, being surrounded by heavily altered nature, fishing a piece of broken and toxic technology out of a small body of polluted water. On my walk today, breaking in my new Garmont Kiowa Vegan hiking shoes, I weeded the sprouting Russian olives some and then noticed pieces of a cell phone in the pool under the little old bridge. As more important people have noted, computers, cell phones, tv's, and other modern conveniences contain an array of heavy metals and chemicals that are fine while contained in their technological form, but horrendous if released into the environment (to say nothing of the fact that they also contain small amounts of gold and other things worth recovering.) That's why responsible recycling of old technology is so important. It's unfortunate, then, that it's so darn fun to break stuff and throw it in bodies of water. I managed to fish out the face plate, and the circuit board with antenna attached, but unfortunately I didn't find the battery, whose acids are probably still leaking into the water. There was a medium sized crawdad dead in the middle of the pool. Not an encouraging sign. Other than that, it was a very nice day.