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Mailable Live Animals
- metalliqaz 5y agoInteresting that they have a specific carve-out for scorpions. It appears there is a good reason (making "antivenin"), but why only scorpions?
- hknapp 5y agohttps://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/sep/11/heres-why-you-can-mail-scorpions-not-spiders/ https://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/sep/11/heres-why-you-can-mail...
- metalliqaz 5y agothe scorpion lobby, heh
- twic 5y agoI mean, if Big Scorpion tells you to do something, you do it.
- shapefrog 5y ago> Other small, harmless, cold–blooded animals Sounds like a bit like my ex wife.
- hnbad 5y agoI for one am glad that cultural acceptance for these jokes is fading, mostly because young people generally no longer find the sentiment relatable because they're no longer expected to marry the first person they want to sleep with.
- reaperducer 5y agoYour comment reveals your own cultural biases. Look inward before looking outward.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y agoI assume it was a mail-order bride joke? Shrug. I can imagine what would drive someone to enter one of those relationships (from either side), but I can't imagine that you'd feel good about it (on either side). It's bad enough dealing with Westerners who seem to be in it for the money. As for our current cultural expectations, I think the idea is supposed to be that you play musical chairs until you hit your mid-to-late thirties, at which point you give up and marry whoever you happen to be with at the time, silently regretting the one that got away. Better? I dunno. It does result in fewer children. People would probably be happier if they married at 18 after their high school prom, and before anyone's fortunes were known.
- shapefrog 5y agoIt's a 'my ex wife is a small, cold blooded but ultimately harmless joke'; 'Other small, harmless, cold-blooded animals' is incredibly vague given the specificity of the other requirements and covers many things. I obviously dont get young people these days, at the ripe old age of mid 20's I dont really think of myself as old, I am happy to be put in my place by the next generation any day of the week. Do 'young' people really even think about getting married? If people are to live an extra 10+ years, start professions 2-3 years later, work many jobs more, buy houses 5+ years later, maybe getting married a few years later isnt all that odd? tbh I did not even think of the mail order bride angle - that would have been much stronger. Do celebrities still do the mail order children thing? Where they pluck some infant out of a refugee camp or warzone and adopt them into the glitz and glamour of hollywood?
- Diederich 5y agoWe've received day old chicks via USPS several times. The local post office had different procedures. Rather than trying to deliver, we were called as soon as they arrived requesting us to come and pick them up. It's pretty neat and kind of surprising at first. Of the hundreds of birds we've received via USPS, none of them were DOA.
- neolog 5y agoDo you have a farm or something?
- Diederich 5y agoMy family and I lived on a farm for a number of years in the early 2000s. We raised chickens for eggs and meat.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dtparr 5y agoProbably just a hungry pet fox.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y agoFunniest troll I've seen in a while :-)
- ddulaney 5y agoWhen I worked in a USPS facility, it was always a mix of emotions when a box started chirping. On the one hand, cute baby birds! On the other hand, they’re going through an ordeal right now (they got special non-machine handling, but it still wasn’t pleasant for them to be packed into cartons) and their destination was most likely a factory farm.
- sethammons 5y agowe've mail ordered chicks many times. Pretty normal for backyard chicken wranglers. Our dozen or so birds have two acres of fenced, lush, half tree-canopied land and a barn to sleep in.
- Peretus 5y agoIn case it's helpful to know, it's highly likely that the baby birds that you helped shipped were destined for pretty nice places! Factory farms don't get their birds this way, but small farms do. Also of note, of the dozens times that we got baby birds shipped to our farm when I was a child, it was very very rare to find more than one or two that didn't survive the trip. And sometimes we'd get shipments without a single loss.
- pvaldes 5y agoNewly hatched chickens can survive without food for more than 24 hours. They only want to sleep and can travel perfectly at this age, so is the usual way for amateurs to buy fancy chicken breeds or small chicken of known sex. So, most probably those chicken would end having a happy life destroying carefully the backyard of somebody, one scratch at a time. There is also a special kind of fishes that lay eggs that can travel perfectly without water in an envelope.
- lisper 5y agoI don't see how anyone could possibly know what the subjective experience of being a day-old chick stuffed in a box would be like. But I can imagine what it would be like to be a human stuffed in a box, and that doesn't seem very pleasant. I don't see how the idea that it might be better for birds (who are pretty clearly sentient creatures) could be based on anything other than rationalization and wishful thinking.
- smoldesu 5y ago522.3, Packaging and Markings: "A mailpiece marked “If Undeliverable, Abandon” may not be accepted for mailing." In other terms, you cannot put a dead animal in a box, then give it to the UPS for them to dispose of. I wonder how many people abused this particular "loophole" before they closed it.
- gruez 5y agoSurely it's cheaper to dispose of it with your other garbage, or take it to a local dump, than paying postage to "mail" it?
- cldellow 5y agoOur dump charges $125 per carcass, regardless of size. But yeah, when they introduced that fee, my wife's family just started burying newborn lambs that didn't survive, rather than, y'know, fedexing them to people.
- jgilm 5y agoI do not believe they would be mailed _to_ factory farms. My daughter raised ducks for 4H. We ordered them _from_ a factory farm and they arrived in 2 days (3 days from hatching). They had a stable high-water-content gel in the box for hydration, but it must have been an ordeal.
- sethammons 5y agoWe've gotten chicks, salt water fish, coral, ladybugs, and live fish food all through the mail. But apparently we can't mail my buddy in a different state some local beer. Oh well, I love my fresh eggs and colorful reef tank :)
- xyzzy21 5y agoThis is how I sometimes get my chicken, turkey, duck and geese chicks. The other is from local sources. At one time you could send human children by US Mail as well. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/brief-history-children-sent-through-mail-180959372/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/brief-history-chil... When I had security clearances involving classified documents and dealt with radioactive materials, BOTH of those were shippable by US Mail also.
- watersb 5y agoExcellent. I was totally sure someone would post the Mail-a-Child™ glory days.
- brownkonas 5y agoUnfortunately a lot of mailed chicks die along the way, ignoring other aspects of factory farming, it’s a pretty cruel way to transport animals.
- newdude116 5y agoYou can't send children anymore: https://www.history.com/news/mailing-children-post-office https://www.history.com/news/mailing-children-post-office
- derefr 5y agoWhich seems like a missed opportunity for a service all its own: a babysitter who babysits while bringing the child somewhere, rather than in a static location. Which could mean "Uber where every driver has a babysitting certificate and the car has a bassinet and a minifridge" or it could mean "someone who'll watch over your child on public transit." It's fundamentally about the babysitting, not really about providing the transportation.
- lxe 5y ago> Each queen honeybee may be accompanied by up to eight attendant honeybees. I wonder what happens if you sneak a few more non-queen honeybees?
- dheera 5y ago> Nonpoisonous Insects So it's legal to just, say, mail a bunch of stink bugs and roaches and fruitflies to businesses that send you junk mail or <insert business you hate>?
- djrogers 5y ago> fruitflies careful with that one - there are interstate restrictions on transporting insects that are unrelated to the USPS.
- reaperducer 5y agoMy parents would mail order bricks of sleeping ladybugs. Put one in the garden and when they thaw out, they eat all the bad insects. I always thought about putting one in someone's locker in high school, but never did it.
- ryanianian 5y agoYou can also do this with praying mantises, but they come as an egg nest. Put them under some leaves and a week or two later baby mantises everywhere eating all the bad things. After a couple months there's always a few big ones that stick around. Surprisingly intelligent and curious little things.
- kube-system 5y agoJust because postal regulations permit them to be mailed does not preclude other reasons why that action might be illegal or expose you to legal liability. There are lots of actions that are legal in isolation that become illegal when you do them to other people, particularly when done with malice.
- dheera 5y agoTheir spam mail and abuse of customers is malice.
- kube-system 5y ago
- jetrink 5y agoI love lists like this. I remember waiting for a Greyhound bus and reading the list of prohibited items and imagining the stories behind each one. It ran on for pages. Human heads were not allowed, even if frozen. Martial arts weapons like swords, nunchucks and throwing stars got a section all their own, separate from guns and knives. Each type of bodily fluid was listed separately, lest someone assume that their jar of urine didn't count.
- kjkjadksj 5y agoThis was probably the gruesome incident that got heads banned: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tim_McLean https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tim_McLean
- andai 5y ago> On February 10, 2017, the Manitoba Criminal Code Review Board ordered Li be discharged. Li was granted an absolute discharge. There will be no legal obligations or restrictions pertaining to Li's independent living.
- pwner39 5y agoI understand that mens rea should generally be present in crimes in order for convictions but eight years for doing what he did is itself insane. Reading up on his background, I wonder if he just snapped and killed the guy out of anger for whatever reason and then started cannibalizing the corpse so that he could play the mental illness card at court.
- np- 5y agoEven if that's true, that's still well beyond a reasonable bound of sanity. Agreed that 8 years seems a bit light though, considering the notoriety of the crime.
- scrps 5y agoIf someone has an epileptic seizure or a diabetic goes into hypoglycemic shock whilst driving and gets into a head on collision and kills someone should they go to prison? They call it mental illness for a reason.
- orangegreen 5y agoOne of my favorite YouTube niches is turtle unboxing videos.
- Amin699 5y agoThe specific types of day-old poultry named in 526.31 are mailable subject to the following requirements: Poultry that is not more than 24 hours old and is presented for mailing in the original, unopened hatchery box from the hatchery of origin. The date and hour of hatching is noted on the box by a representative of the hatchery who has personal knowledge thereof. (For Collect on Delivery (COD) shipments made by a hatchery for the account of others, the name or initials and address of the hatchery or the Post Office box number and address of the hatchery must be prominently shown for this standard.) Box is properly ventilated, of proper construction and strength to bear safe transport in the mail, and is not stacked more than 10 units high. Day–old poultry is mailed early enough in the week to avoid receipt at the office of address (in case of missed connections) on a Sunday, a national holiday, or the afternoon before a Sunday or national holiday. Day–old poultry can be delivered to the addressee within 72 hours of the time of hatching. Day-old poultry sent via surface transportation, must include special handling service fees, in addition to regular postage. Day-old poultry sent via air transportation must meet all provisions of the airlines. Delivery of the mailpiece is dependent on the availability of air carriers having available equipment to safely deliver the day–old poultry within the specified time limit. Day–old poultry that is first shipped via a commercial air express or air cargo service and then presented for mailing to a final destination must be in good condition and properly packaged as specified in 526.32a-e. Boxes of day–old poultry of about identical size, securely fastened together to prevent separation in transit, may be accepted for mailing as a single parcel, provided the total length and girth combined does not exceed Postal Service limits.
- sappho 5y agoI keep insects as pets, and this seems to be a common way to get live insects from point A to point B. I felt a little bad about having them go through the surely-unpleasant process of being in the mail for a couple days, but they came out on the other side healthy enough that I didn't lose any. Makes the idea of keeping pet insects that no store or breeder sells near you a lot more affordable, which is nice, since a lot of insects make such easy and practical pets.
- munificent 5y agoThere's a number of different "monthyl random box of stuff in some category" services these days. I had one for international snacks for a while. My wife did one for cat toys. I've seen one for fishing gear. Clearly, what the world needs is one for animals. One month: adorable baby chicks. Peep peep. Next month: S C O R P I O N S.
- kiddico 5y agoFinally, something I can get my sister for Christmas!
- RodgerTheGreat 5y agoI understand that you are probably joking. For anyone less clear, please remember that animals have complex needs in terms of environment, food, and care to live healthy and pleasant lives. Adorable baby chicks are not a pet to be adopted lightly, without appropriate preparation. Chickens are in many ways much more demanding than a cat or dog. As a chicken owner myself, I've heard far too many sad stories of people implulse-buying a chick at a hardware store or livestock show, only for it to perish soon after due to easily-avoided oversights or misunderstandings.
- reaperducer 5y agoIf you expand your definition of "mailing" things, all sorts of creatures can be sent. I once mailed a cat via Delta Airlines. Brought the kitty in a carrier to a special desk at the airport with the forms and certificates and a fist full of cash and a few hours later, he was in New York. I know that sharks and elephants and such can be shipped via FedEx, but I don't consider that "mailing" because the handlers stay with those high-value critters.
- TheAdamist 5y agoThere's an interesting British tv show "animal airport" that covers the 24/7 operation at Heathrow airport that deals with the animals coming through. Lots of paperwork issues, but occasionally random zoo animals turn up on planes due to misdirected air cargo/shenanigans. As well as the scheduled exotics and tons of domestic animals to be quarantined. Far less handlers than you'd expect for the exotics. Mostly just really sturdy crates. Used to be available streaming.
- 1-6 5y agoI love Easter eggs!
- FourHand451 5y agoI worked in the campus post office while in college, and one of the most memorable days during my time there was when a box of live bees was delivered. It was about the size of a small loaf of bread, wooden on four sides and covered by screens on the other two. We set them aside from the other boxes, near the counter where students would come to pick up their packages. It sat there buzzing quietly all day and generating a lot of surprised looks. Pretty neat.
- 5faulker 5y agoHence the term "creating the buzz".
- cultofmetatron 5y agowould you say it "generated a lot of buzz" among the students?
- dekhn 5y agoI had an aquarium and the snail died. I wrote to the compoany, they mailed me a snail. It was great.
- andybak 5y agoSnail mail. For real.
- bigboto 5y agoI totally misread the title as Malleable Live Animals
- Anonymous4272 5y agoThats why i clicked lol
- handrous 5y agoHeh. Like the old Bonsai Kitten hoax website.
- chris_st 5y agoI remember going in late to work, in order to receive my daughter's lizard via delivery. I was very concerned, but several years later he's doing just fine.
- bigyikes 5y agoI’m surprised to not see fish listed. When I was a kid my dad would receive live fish from saltwaterfish.com. They would show up in insulated containers, alive, if a bit stressed. I guess they must’ve come via one of the private mail carriers. Edit: Whoops, I can’t read!
- stickydink 5y agoRequirements for "Goldfish" and "Tropical Fish" are listed under the "Small, Harmless, Cold–Blooded Animals" section
- KANahas 5y agoThey are listed, under “526.6 Small, Harmless, Cold–Blooded Animals” Goldfish Tropical Fish - Fish must be held in a securely sealed primary receptacle. - Fish must be held in a securely sealed primary receptacle. - Primary receptacle must be cushioned with sufficient absorbent material to take up all liquid in case of leakage. - Primary receptacle and absorbent cushioning material must be sealed within waterproof outer (shipping) packaging.
- ryanianian 5y agoIn general we tend to over-pack and over-engineer a lot of our shipping and handling processes. Turns out many things just aren't that big of a deal (like shipping bees). My friend was stationed in Hawaii. She mailed me a coconut. No box, just a stapled a first-class shipping label to it. Delivered without issue.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y agoThe etch a sketch is hilarious. Every day of travel decreases the chances of it getting to it's destination.
- wsinks 5y agoI don't understand.. where did the context for an etch-a-sketch getting mailed come from? Why does every day of travel decrease the chances of it getting to its destination? I have to know.. :) *EDIT: ahhh, non-linear commenting! I went to the wired article from the other comment and found what you're referring to. I thought maybe they mailed it with a picture... they mailed it with an address?! that's one hell of a stress test.
- brk 5y agoWired magazine used to feature an odd mailed item each month, which included a coconut, among other things. Some of them were pretty cool and creative. Many would likely cause some kind of terror alert if attempted today: https://www.wired.com/2008/12/st-15returntosender/ https://www.wired.com/2008/12/st-15returntosender/
- macintux 5y agoReminds me of a story I can’t find online at the moment: apparently when Games magazine still was published, people would address letters to them with the address encoded as a puzzle. I guess the USPS finally just started sending them any mail with a sufficiently confusing destination address.
- xjlin0 5y ago
- incanus77 5y agoI grew up rural and we fairly frequently ordered chicks by mail. I told the story in college of one time, a message left on our answering machine pleading "please, come get your chicks!" with incessant peeping in the background, as we must have not been at home during the mail delivery. For folks who grew up in the city, even the thought of the whole thing was a very powerful (and funny) story.
- larsbrinkhoff 5y agopetsovernight.com
- matmann2001 5y ago"Let me pop a quick 'H' on this box, this way we all know that it's filled with hornets."
- alexfromapex 5y agoI’ve heard you can also mail a potato if you slap the right amount of stamps on it
- btilly 5y agoOne important restriction on mailing is that you CANNOT mail fertile ants through USPS. Which means that all of those ant farms you see being sold to kids? You pay money, and get some sterile workers who are guaranteed to die pretty fast, leaving an unhappy kid. If you want a real ant farm, you need to either collect ants locally, or buy ants in person from someone who did themselves. And you'd better known the rules if you want to cross state lines with your ants. (Source, I have a teenager who loooves ants and knows everything about them. He now has multiple species of ants that he keeps.)
- vishbar 5y agoThat is really interesting! I never had an ant farm, and I'm glad I didn't given what you've said. Are ants similar to bees in that there's one egg-laying "queen" that you have to gather, or can you just gather a collection of individuals from a colony? Your kid probably already knows about this, but have him check out the YouTuber AntsCanada. I'm not particularly into ants but I find his videos fascinating.
- JulianMorrison 5y agoAnts have queens. Ants are a kind of flightless wasp, they have a lot of commonalities with the wasp/bee family.
- btilly 5y agoMy kid has been aware of AntsCanada for a long time, and has purchased lots of supplies from them. Yes, most ants are similar to bees in that way. In fact ants and bees are very closely related. But a few kinds of ants (for example the invasive Argentine ants), can have multiple queens in a colony that cooperate with each other. The reason for this rule is the ease with which ants become invasive species, and how much damage they can do.
- hashkb 5y agoDoes your kid know about SimAnt?
- simlevesque 5y agoDoes anyone know why you cannot ship a pheasant in december ?
- pvaldes 5y agoIs too cold to survive
- adamnemecek 5y agoI’ve been aware of this. It’s really fucked up if you’d so me.
- sneak 5y agoThere is a very classic webpage related to this list of rules: https://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/TMP-1110023375.htm https://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/T...
- code4money 5y agoWhat happens when a package gets lost that contains an animal?
- sethammons 5y agotypically, the animal dies. We've had live fish not make it in time to our door. Not as bad as this: https://www.thedodo.com/live-animal-keychains-china-1225684627.html https://www.thedodo.com/live-animal-keychains-china-12256846...
- jacurtis 5y agoSo I actually used to work at the Post Office (when I was in my early 20s) and I was an express mail case worker. Essentially what that means is that whenever people had a problem with express mail (overnight and 2nd day mail, depending on origin/destination), someone would file a case and it was my problem to research it, solve it, or to conclude it lost, etc. Anyway, virtually all animal shipping happens via Express Mail. So it became my problem to handle most cases involving animal shipping. I worked this job for about 2 years. I will tell you that every day animals die within the USPS. The vast majority die not because of the actual USPS, but because the people shipping the animals did it improperly. Here's a short list of specific cases I remember: - Someone shipped a baby alligator. They didn't mark it as live animal (because they thought it wasn't allowed) or ship it appropriately. The alligator chewed through a portion of the box by the time it arrived at the destination post office. A worker looked through the hole and discovered what they thought was a puppy, so they opened the box to save it and saw it was an exhausted alligator. Local animal control was called and the alligator wasn't able to be saved. Animal control disposed of the body. Alligators are actually very commonly shipped and are legal to ship, so if this person had done it correctly the animal would probably have survived. - Rare butterflies were sent from Vietnam via international first class mail, when the box arrived it was flat and all the butterflies were dead. It got escalated to me because no one in first class mail knew how to handle animal cases. I remember this case in excruciating detail because the recipient continued to call and harass me for 3-4 months after this happened. This was a weird borderline case because it was international mail where the sending PO (in Vietnam) allows sending of these animals but local PO (in USA) didn't allow receiving of these animals. The guy was hellbent on getting reimbursed for non-insured first class mail. He claims he spent $10,000 on the butterflies. Since it wasn't insured we never researched the legitimacy of this amount, nor did he receive any compensation. Eventually Postal Inspectors were called just because of his continued harassment. - Baby Chickens are commonly shipped. I don't remember any specific cases because in spring time I was handling 5-10 of these cases EVERY DAY. They also commonly do not survive, even when properly handled and shipped. So get your insurance if you order baby chicks. These are some of the easiest insurance reimbursements I have seen, they get approved faster than almost anything else in the USPS. It's insanely common. - Someone shipped a salt water fish of some kind. The fish survived the transport but the recipient said the fish refused to eat because it was so traumatized from our shipping methods. So the fish went on a hunger strike and died a week or so later. They had spent $1,500 on the fish and wanted reimbursement. His reimbursement was denied. - Someone shipped a fertilized Ostrich Egg. They packed it in bubble wrap and had some of those hand warmers inside that you use when skiing. When it was accepted by the recipient, they opened it and discovered the egg had cracked during shipment. Pretty standard boring case at first glance. But the reason I remember it is because the insurance claim was originally rejected because Ostrich was a non-indigenous fowl. Then the recipient sent back a 20 slide powerpoint to me that they created which proved that Ostriches are actually considered farmed-poultry (who knew?). So then I passed it through as approved but it was denied again because of improper packaging. Eggs have to be sent in "hatchery" packaging. I don't think that person ever got their insurance claim. - Puppies. People actually try to ship puppies via USPS. Please do not do this ever. You will have Postal Inspectors called and they will fine you and charge you with a felony & animal abuse. Same goes for kittens, although for some reason puppies were more common than kittens. Both are big no-nos. Luckily these usually get caught early on at the origin post office or at the initial sorting facility, so many have been "saved" before they passed away. Animal Control retrieves the animals and they go to the pound/shelter. Either way Postal Inspectors get involved 100% of the time in these cases. So its a sure-fire way to get charged with a felony. I remember 2 cases where I was actually able to find lost puppies and save them. One time I spent close to 8 full hours tracking them down. They still go to animal control when they are found, they do not continue onto the recipient. The second time we found the lost puppies it was because the destination PO discovered them and called the police and the Postal Inspectors directly, but never updated the tracking. So the puppies were safe (I think one died in that case). - Bees are very commonly shipped and they make it safely through the mail system 99% of the time. They actually pack them up and store them very well. So what happens when a package gets lost? Well live-animals have the highest priority in the USPS' case management system. So even if I was behind on cases and working on cases that were submitted days ago, as soon as an live animal case comes in, it immediately moves to the next case above everything else. So they are handled promptly. As a case worker we usually actually picked up the phone to call sorting facilities when we were dealing with a lost animal as opposed to sending emails like usual for information. I'd say we tracked down around half of all lost animal claims. Some would get discovered "too late", and many would just get lost for good. What happens when a deceased animal is discovered? If it was an approved animal then it would go to the recipient as usual, sometimes with a note. If the animal was unapproved (like a snake or turtle for example) then Postal Inspectors are called. If it was a larger animal or a mammal like a puppy or kitten, then animal control is usually called to handle the body. Lastly, Ill mention insurance. The way USPS does insurance claims is a headache for everyone. We had a joke when I worked there that the goal was for people to give up on fighting for their insurance claim. Because that is what usually happened. Payouts take 6 months or so on average. There is a lot of back and forth and records need to be immaculate. Most people don't have any proof of what they shipped or the value of what they shipped. So claims were rarely approved. Last I mentioned "Postal Inspectors". These are actual federal agents that oversee USPS claims. They are essentially federal police officers and they can arrest and charge you with felonies. They investigate all sorts of stuff, like mailing drugs, elaborate mail tampering schemes, and so forth. They also handled cases where extreme animal neglect occurs while shipping live animals. So keep that in mind when you ship a live animal against the rules posted on that site, because you can actually get a felony for it (like shipping dogs and stuff). Edit: This was nearly 15 years ago, so some practices and rules might have changed since then.
- learc83 5y agoMy stepdad does maintenance for the Post Office. He has some stories. Someone shipped a small alligator once. It peed in the cardboard box it was in and it got wet enough for it to escape inside a sorting machine. Imagine his surprise when he opened up the machine to see what was causing the errors.
- base3 5y agoMy neighbor gets regular deliveries of live roaches, which he feeds to pet lizards. They come by US mail from a roach farm in Arkansas. Some farmer must be laughing his way to the bank every time he ships roaches to Los Angeles.
- 29athrowaway 5y agoIn the past, USPS used to mail humans, specifically children. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.history.com/.amp/news/mailing-children-post-office https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.history.com/.amp/news/maili... This was because there were not clear guidelines regarding what you could mail.
- wombat-man 5y agoBrb, getting started on PetsOvernight.com!
- Scoundreller 5y agoNot a bad business to get into. Facebook marketplace doesn’t allow live animals and that’s the bigger classified site usually, leaving a vacuum for everything else.
- esalman 5y agoAs a non-immigrant, USPS is probably the #3 most impressive thing to me about the US after the interstate highways and national parks.
- markdown 5y agoAs a non-athlete, I agree.
- diogenesjunior 5y agoWhat is your first and second?
- markstos 5y agoCan confirm. Lived on farm. Used to get bees in the mail.
- exhilaration 5y agoNo one has mentioned butterflies yet. Not an advertisement: we ordered butterfly caterpillars from insectlore.com and it was pretty awesome to watch them go through their life cycle. Our kids were squealing with wonder when the butterflies finally broke out of their chrysalises. Then after a day or two, we took them to a nice wooded area and released them.
- mabbo 5y agoVaguely related and humourous: > Uncle Milton Industries has been selling ant farms to children since 1956. Some years ago, I remember opening one up with a friend. There were no actual ants included in the box. Instead, there was a card that you filled in with your address, and the company would mail you some ants. My friend expressed surprise that you could get ants sent to you in the mail. > I replied: “What’s really interesting is that these people will send a tube of live ants to anyone you tell them to.” https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/the_security_mi_1.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/the_security_...
- whyenot 5y agoYou can also write an address on a fresh coconut, add postage, and mail it, at least from some locations (pretty sure this doesn't work from Floida to California).
- andybak 5y agoI have a memory of posting a slice of bread to someone and by coincidence being at his house when it arrived. It seems so improbable in retrospect thay I wonder how much I confabulated.
- post_break 5y agoI have had koi delivered via UPS. But that's probably normal to most people right?
- ourmandave 5y agoThis reminds me of the horror pygmy marmosets or "Thumb Monkeys" endure. There's a very high mortality rate as they're poached and shipped to people who have no idea how to care for one. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/no-pygmy-marmosets-are-not-cool-new-accessory/ https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/no-pygmy-marmo...
- alex_young 5y agoI once had to go to a mail processing facility in SF to retrieve a package which had had an exception in the delivery process. That was it's own nightmare, but I digress... The postal worker I eventually talked to had a desk in a little office where she seemed to be sorting out issues for people like me. I think my case was a pretty mild one, but she kept getting calls from people about some live chicks which were somehow stuck there. It did not seem like fun. The post office is amazing. They are true unsung heroes.
- Scoundreller 5y agoLuckily for you, USPS can’t go on strike. There’s usually quite a few (non-human) deaths when Canada’s postal workers go on strike.
- aae42 5y agopicking up packages of bees at the post office is hilarious (they won’t deliver it all the way to your house) i love doing the ‘ol “oops i’m gonna drop it” routine as i walk out the door past the horrified people standing in line to buy stamps
- aussieguy1234 5y agoHere's a human that mailed himself: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/welshman-who-mailed-himself-home/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/welshman-who-mailed-h...