[HN Gopher] Mailable Live Animals
___________________________________________________________________
Mailable Live Animals
Author : bobbiechen
Score : 206 points
Date : 2021-08-17 15:15 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pe.usps.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (pe.usps.com)
| aae42 wrote:
| picking 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
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Interesting that they have a specific carve-out for scorpions. It
| appears there is a good reason (making "antivenin"), but why only
| scorpions?
| hknapp wrote:
| https://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/sep/11/heres-why-you-can-mail...
| metalliqaz wrote:
| the scorpion lobby, heh
| twic wrote:
| I mean, if Big Scorpion tells you to do something, _you do
| it_.
| markstos wrote:
| Can confirm. Lived on farm. Used to get bees in the mail.
| matmann2001 wrote:
| "Let me pop a quick 'H' on this box, this way we all know that
| it's filled with hornets."
| sethammons wrote:
| We'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 :)
| dekhn wrote:
| I had an aquarium and the snail died. I wrote to the compoany,
| they mailed me a snail. It was great.
| andybak wrote:
| Snail mail. For real.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| This 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-chil...
|
| When I had security clearances involving classified documents and
| dealt with radioactive materials, BOTH of those were shippable by
| US Mail also.
| watersb wrote:
| Excellent. I was totally sure someone would post the Mail-a-
| Child(tm) glory days.
| reaperducer wrote:
| If 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 wrote:
| There'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.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| I've heard you can also mail a potato if you slap the right
| amount of stamps on it
| bigboto wrote:
| I totally misread the title as Malleable Live Animals
| Anonymous4272 wrote:
| Thats why i clicked lol
| handrous wrote:
| Heh. Like the old Bonsai Kitten hoax website.
| chris_st wrote:
| I 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.
| newdude116 wrote:
| You can't send children anymore:
|
| https://www.history.com/news/mailing-children-post-office
| derefr wrote:
| Which 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.
| btilly wrote:
| One 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.)
| kelnos wrote:
| Can you ship fertile ants through UPS or Fedex?
| ethn wrote:
| This whole time I thought I did something wrong.
| vishbar wrote:
| That 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 wrote:
| Ants have queens. Ants are a kind of flightless wasp, they
| have a lot of commonalities with the wasp/bee family.
| btilly wrote:
| My 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 wrote:
| Does your kid know about SimAnt?
| btilly wrote:
| He's at school so I can't just ask him.
|
| But if it comes to ants, I'm willing to bet money that he
| knows it.
|
| I remember being at a bug fair with him a few years back.
| There was a grad student with a display including some
| fossilized ants. My son came over, looked, identified the
| genus, began pointing out the identifying characteristics
| and named multiple related current species. The grad
| student's jaw dropped open. The only things that the grad
| student knew which my son didn't was how old the fossil
| was and where it was found.
|
| And here is some fun trivia. If you look, between the
| thorax (where the legs grow) and the gaster (the bulb at
| the end), there is a very, very skinny petiole. The only
| food that can pass through that and keep the ant alive is
| high energy fluid. So a major problem for every species
| of ant is how to turn the world around into such a fluid
| so that they can eat it.
| bonnie76 wrote:
| Tell your teenager the world needs more people like him if
| we're going to save the worlds insects. We need more
| entomologist.
| wincy wrote:
| I don't know, insects have been doing pretty well for a long
| time, and only one large group of insects that we know of has
| ever gone extinct, even during the absolutely horrific
| Permian-Triassic extinction event.
|
| I know as humans our impulse is to "do something about it",
| but I think insects are gonna be fine.
| btilly wrote:
| Insects may do fine, but individual species are another
| story.
|
| For example through most of Los Angeles, if you see an ant
| it is probably an Argentine ant (Linepithema humile). Over
| my son's life, the variety of native ants to be found near
| me has visibly declined.
| dexterdog wrote:
| That's probably not so much climate change as it is
| invading foreign species.
| btilly wrote:
| And the reduction in flying insects documented in https:/
| /journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
| is unlikely to be climate change either. Nor is
| https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/colony-
| collapse-di....
|
| Not everything is about climate change.
| markdown wrote:
| What isn't about climate change soon will be.
| ryanianian wrote:
| Sure insects in general will be "fine", but ecosystems will
| have to be rebuilt over time with the different dynamics.
|
| Take bees/pollinators. Another species could evolve or
| otherwise step in to fill the gap, but it could well result
| in many other plant and animal species also going extinct
| in the process.
|
| Similar scenario with climate change. The earth will
| continue to exist and there will continue to be weather.
| But that weather could be a lot more inhospitable to our
| very narrow definition of habitable.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Yes, I know global warming doesn't mean the end of the
| (human) world as many suspect and are skeptical about.
| Humans will find a way to survive in special habitats and
| in much smaller numbers. What's at stake is the current
| civilization. With civilization's collapse we're bound to
| repeat this progress to self-destruction cycle.
| Jun8 wrote:
| Yep, my son did buy his first colony from a local college kid,
| through the GAN Project: https://www.antscanada.com/queen-ants-
| for-sale/. Since he was away, his mom brought the colony to us,
| we met discreetly at a library, felt a bit like a spy
| transaction :-)
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Actually there are two species that were made legal to ship in
| the US last year. More information (and for sale) here. [0]
|
| [0] https://tarheelants.com/pages/ant-queen-and-colony-adoption
| btilly wrote:
| Awesome.
|
| I wish they were legal a decade ago when we were trying to
| figure out how to buy ant farms...
| esalman wrote:
| As a non-immigrant, USPS is probably the #3 most impressive thing
| to me about the US after the interstate highways and national
| parks.
| markdown wrote:
| As a non-athlete, I agree.
| diogenesjunior wrote:
| What is your first and second?
| bigyikes wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| Requirements for "Goldfish" and "Tropical Fish" are listed
| under the "Small, Harmless, Cold-Blooded Animals" section
| KANahas wrote:
| They 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.
| 1-6 wrote:
| I love Easter eggs!
| learc83 wrote:
| My 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.
| shapefrog wrote:
| > Other small, harmless, cold-blooded animals
|
| Sounds like a bit like my ex wife.
| hnbad wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Your comment reveals your own cultural biases. Look inward
| before looking outward.
| javert wrote:
| That seems more applicable to your comment than the one
| you're replying to.
|
| But maybe that's just my cultural biases speaking.
| shapefrog wrote:
| I think its your cultural biases as work, or is it mine?
| So hard to tell these days.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| It'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?
| simlevesque wrote:
| Does anyone know why you cannot ship a pheasant in december ?
| pvaldes wrote:
| Is too cold to survive
| lxe wrote:
| > 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?
| whyenot wrote:
| You 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| dheera wrote:
| > 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>?
| reaperducer wrote:
| My 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 wrote:
| You 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 wrote:
| Just 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 wrote:
| Their spam mail and abuse of customers is malice.
| kube-system wrote:
| Who is they?
|
| ... _abuse of customers_?
| dheera wrote:
| Digging up my residential address or sharing it with
| other businesses for any purpose other than to render
| services (e.g. to send a package that I ordered, you
| might need to share it with FedEx) is harrassment IMO.
| djrogers wrote:
| > fruitflies
|
| careful with that one - there are interstate restrictions on
| transporting insects that are unrelated to the USPS.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| There's no pre-existing market for "a bunch of stink bugs",
| however ladybugs are useful for non-toxic pest control (they'll
| eat aphids), so they can be ordered via mail.
| jetrink wrote:
| I 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.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| There was an incident maybe 30 years ago where a medical school
| employee went into New York (I think it was) to pick up a batch
| of human heads to be used for teaching purposes. He left the
| box in his car while taking care of another errand, and it was
| stolen.
|
| The box was found sitting on the sidewalk a few blocks away,
| with the heads still in it.
|
| One can only imagine what went through the thief's mind when he
| opened his "prize".
| np- wrote:
| Regardless of the thief, it does seem a little concerning
| that the chain of custody for actual human heads involves
| being left unattended in a random employee's car.
| sneak wrote:
| The world is not nearly as tightly controlled as one might
| think. Lots of stuff is just some normal person's job to
| not lose track of.
|
| Body parts are only super custody tracked when they are
| still viable lifesaving tools (ie organ transplant).
| Besides that they aren't a huge deal.
| kortilla wrote:
| Why? They aren't going to escape.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Well, they clearly did that one time.
| dharmab wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_McCurdy#Post-
| mortem_comm...
| dexterdog wrote:
| Once they've been relegated to the heap of experimentation
| they really don't need to be controlled that much. Oddly I
| would feel in some way violated if a loved one of mine had
| died and his/her head were in that box, but if it happened
| to my own head I would pay it no mind.
| dharmab wrote:
| There was a news splash several years ago about a body
| donation intended for Alzheimer's research which was used
| for military explosives testing:
| https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-
| body...
| s0rce wrote:
| A lab I worked in while I was in college had a freezer with
| a bunch of human heads in it. pretty creepy.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| This was probably the gruesome incident that got heads banned:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tim_McLean
| andai wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| scrps wrote:
| If 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.
| catillac wrote:
| I've known people with epilepsy who were banned from
| driving due to this possibly. If they had driven and
| gotten a seizure and killed someone, they would have been
| driving with a reckless disregard for the safety of
| others, which is enough of a mens rea to form intention
| for some level of murder conviction.
|
| It is likely this is largely true, even if not formally
| banned from driving, so the answer is probably yes to
| your hypothetical they should go to prison, or pulling
| the normative phrase out, likely would go to prison
| (subject to many mitigating factors).
| scrps wrote:
| Perhaps epilepsy was a bad choice. How about for cardiac
| arrest, stroke, or any number of undiagnosed medical
| conditions that could cause someone to create
| dangerous/fatal conditions outside of their control?
| dahfizz wrote:
| > They call it mental illness for a reason.
|
| Even if we accept your premise that having a mental
| illness precludes one from taking responsibility for
| their actions, you still have to deal with the fact that
| they are a serious danger to society. One of the uses of
| prison is to take people who would otherwise murder and
| eat people and remove them from society, so that they
| can't do that.
| scrps wrote:
| https://laws-
| lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/section-16.htm...
| dahfizz wrote:
| I am making a moral argument, not a legal one.
| np- wrote:
| Even 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.
| _understood_ wrote:
| 0_0
| pwner39 wrote:
| Eight years at a mental hospital for murdering and
| cannibalizing a sleeping man, seems fair.
| giorgioz wrote:
| I wish I had not opened that link and read it.
| twic wrote:
| Unlikely, as in this case, at the time of boarding, the head
| was still attached to Mr McLean.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Why would that result in a prohibition of transporting human
| heads? Are you OK?
| [deleted]
| Diederich wrote:
| We'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 wrote:
| Do you have a farm or something?
| Diederich wrote:
| My family and I lived on a farm for a number of years in the
| early 2000s. We raised chickens for eggs and meat.
| [deleted]
| dtparr wrote:
| Probably just a hungry pet fox.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Funniest troll I've seen in a while :-)
| ddulaney wrote:
| When 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.
| captainredbeard wrote:
| Factory farms special order birds and receive them via freight,
| not USPS.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Newly 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.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| killifish are the fish you are talking about
| lisper wrote:
| I 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.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Real life !== Disney films.
| mod wrote:
| I think a more apt comparison is to imagine a human being
| shipped in a padded shipping container with a dozen of her
| friends to keep her warm and help her feel safe.
|
| I've had chicks shipped to me this way and it didn't appear
| to be traumatic at all for them. They grew into happy,
| healthy birds.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I think the assumption that the fresh chicks just hatched
| from an egg (or in the case of a human came out a womb)
| wouldn't be too panicked about confined spaces.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > I 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 then you go on to pretend to do exactly that.
|
| You're projecting a negative human experience onto birds.
| elliottkember wrote:
| This is called "anthropomorphism" and is a form of
| fallacious reasoning.
| lisper wrote:
| I call it empathy.
| tomrod wrote:
| Sympathy at best.
| btilly wrote:
| _They only want to sleep and can travel perfectly at this
| age..._
|
| I'm dubious. There is well-established research on the
| importance of imprinting for new-born chicks across a wide
| variety of bird species. Therefore, even if the chick spends
| most of its time asleep, I would want to see research saying
| that there is no problem due to intentionally depriving the
| chick of an appropriate target to imprint on.
| sethammons wrote:
| I've never noticed anything different between chicks we
| raised and those that came in the mail. They all come
| running when when we walk into the back pasture.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Where my wife is from, it's very common for neighbors to mail
| one another chicks and ducklings as Easter presents.
| Peretus wrote:
| In 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.
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| I'm awaiting a box of 6 chicks right now, probably coming
| tomorrow, and they're going to have long and happy lives (I
| hope). Egg layers.
| sethammons wrote:
| we'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.
| ryanianian wrote:
| In 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.
| brk wrote:
| Wired 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/
| macintux wrote:
| Reminds 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.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| The etch a sketch is hilarious. Every day of travel decreases
| the chances of it getting to it's destination.
| wsinks wrote:
| I 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.
| xjlin0 wrote:
| You are lucky -- not all fruit/seed can be mailed from Hawaii
| to lower 48. Coconuts & pineapple are among exceptions.
| https://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/plant_health/fs-ship...
| kortilla wrote:
| Upper, Hawaii is quite far south of the other states. :)
| orangegreen wrote:
| One of my favorite YouTube niches is turtle unboxing videos.
| munificent wrote:
| There'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 wrote:
| Finally, something I can get my sister for Christmas!
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| I 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.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| In the past, USPS used to mail humans, specifically children.
|
| 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.
| Amin699 wrote:
| The 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.
| smoldesu wrote:
| 522.3, 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 wrote:
| Surely 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 wrote:
| Our 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.
| post_break wrote:
| I have had koi delivered via UPS. But that's probably normal to
| most people right?
| wombat-man wrote:
| Brb, getting started on PetsOvernight.com!
| larsbrinkhoff wrote:
| petsovernight.com
| alex_young wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Luckily 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.
| mabbo wrote:
| Vaguely 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_...
| incanus77 wrote:
| I 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.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| I've been aware of this. It's really fucked up if you'd so me.
| base3 wrote:
| My 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.
| ourmandave wrote:
| This 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-marmo...
| exhilaration wrote:
| No 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.
| sneak wrote:
| There is a very classic webpage related to this list of rules:
|
| https://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/T...
| jgilm wrote:
| I 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.
| sappho wrote:
| I 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.
| FourHand451 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Hence the term "creating the buzz".
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| would you say it "generated a lot of buzz" among the students?
| code4money wrote:
| What happens when a package gets lost that contains an animal?
| jacurtis wrote:
| So 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.
| sethammons wrote:
| typically, 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-12256846...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-08-17 23:01 UTC)