In our modern era of advanced technology with email, Skype, Messenger, Snapchat, and other platforms, traditional mail often gets overlooked. It’s unfortunate because there’s actually a fascinating array of peculiar items that have been and continue to be sent through the United States postal service. Here, we present some of our favourite examples.
Snow
Have a friend who lives in a warm climate and hates it? Does that friend long for snow? Do they miss shoveling, making snowmen or just spreading some snow around and making snow angels? You’re in luck! You can make their dreams come true by shipping them real snow, anywhere in the US. Ship Snow Yo is a service that will pack the real stuff into a Styrofoam cooler and ship it via FedEx Express. The snow is sourced from… you guessed it. Snowy places! Places like Vermont, Colorado, and Massachusetts. No word on if you can specify the origin of snow that you’re shipping.
Cats
So, you can’t technically mail a cat via USPS these days, but it is worth mentioning that in 1897, a very ticked-off black cat was mailed via the pneumatic tube system in New York City. The pneumatic tube system launched that year, and it’s pretty obvious that Rocketeers (the people who operated said tubes) were pretty stoked to see what they could get away with sending.
Scorpions
No, this isn’t a great way to get back at an ex. good, but not great. Scorpions are mailable as per the rules of USPS, but only when the intent is medical research or the creation of antivenin. The fun part is that the scorpions don’t have to be dead.
Baby Chicks
Actually, under section 526.3 of the USPS’s “Mailable Live Animals” policy, you can ship a number of day-old animals of the poultry variety. Chickens, quail, turkeys, ducks, emus, guinea birds, geese and partridges can be shipped any time; pheasants between the months of April and August. There are, however, stipulations. The baby birds can’t be more than 24 hours old, and they have to be mailed in an unopened hatchery box from their hatchery of origin.
Live Bees
It’s probably not as fun to mail live bees as you would first imagine. Sure, you get to handle live bees and ship them to people, and who doesn’t love that? Seriously, though, with the worldwide honeybee shortage, we hope people are mailing bees to responsible people who will create good homes for them. The USPS tells us, in 526.21, that only honeybees and queen honeybees are OK to ship.
