Lately about the “weirdest” item I’ve mailed is hardwood fig tree cuttings.
That’s a mere trifle as far as the U.S. Mail is concerned. I pity the mailman/postal worker who has to deal with a poorly sealed 72-hour fecal fat collection.
"Use a one gallon, plastic leak-proof container with screw cap (warehouse item #2614). Record total collection time (24, 48, or 72 hours) and weight on test requisition. If entire collection is sent to the lab, the lab will verify weight of sample. Keep refrigerated during collection.** Do no submit specimen in metal paint cans, as processing poses a safety hazard. Specimens received in paint cans will be rejected."*
*I pity the poor lab techs as well.
**Not to mention the spouse of the “collector” who reaches for the wrong container during a late-night raid on the fridge.
I have certainly mailed various car parts. I have shipped & received various chemicals hundreds of times. I get embarrassed for my entire industry every time I get a package that’s leaking. It’s not all that difficult, people.
Probably the item that was the most fun was receiving a metal pipe with end caps welded on. The mailing address label was stuck to the outside of the pipe. I took it to the maintenance shop - to use the band saw to cut the end caps off. The entire maintenance crew suddenly had to go on break. Inside was a container of fungicide. Wicked stuff. That was the only time I ever had to wear a Level A suit in the maintenance shop. Ah, the good old days…
Three live turtles. I was sending them back to a friend in Louisiana (where they came from) to be released in the wild (after having been pets up north for a few years). I put them in a box and dropped them off at the airport at the place for shipping cargo. Of course I couldn’t tell anyone what was inside. I was hoping nobody would hear them scratching inside the box. They arrived safe and sound.
Going to the post office the day everyone’s mail order baby chickens come in is quite a fun event. The whole place is just “peep peep peep peep” from hundreds of baby chicks.
A couple of more somewhat funny incidents that don’t reach the level of weird:
Back around the turn of the century I made a deal with a guy in California to trade some DVDs for some DIMMs. He sent the DIMMs first, and since the box was big enough, I mailed the DVDs to him in the same box. A few days later, he told me about how someone came knocking on his door early in the morning, and it was a postal worker and the popo (band name!) insisting that they open the package in front of them–something made them suspect that there were drugs inside.
Years after that, I ordered a number of ammonite fossils (in matrix) from the UK. So one Saturday morning someone from the post office (the city branch, before it reached my town branch for distribution) called me and told me the package was there, and if I hurried I could get there before they closed at noon to pick it up (my phone number was on the customs label.) I told him that it was a box of rocks, so there was no hurry. I don’t know if that package was suspected of suspiciousness or what, but it seemed oddly above the call of duty to call somebody like that.
I purchased an iron manhole cover with my old home town’s name cast into it. It arrived damaged. Somehow, either the seller or the P.O. managed to break the thing in half. I had to mail it back and got a full refund including my shipping cost.
It’s not particularly weird, but I had to get around customs to mail sourdough starter to my cousin in Australia. At first, I just tried to mail it normally, properly declared and all. Got rejected and destroyed at customs in Australia. So I emailed her a birthday car with a photo pasted onto it – the paste being the sourdough starter (which can be flaked off and reinvigorated fairly straightforwardly.) That one got through.
Not mailed, but as a pilot the weirdest thing I had to transport was a large, industrial scale. Which meant I found myself in the position of asking, “Um… how much does that scale weigh?”
Not weird, but stress-inducing. When I was in college, the person who had mentored me during my summer job was having a hard time. So to cheer her up I mailed her a joint (from Boston to Washington, DC), tucked into a box of loose herbal tea so it would be fairly inconspicuous.
The moment I dropped it in the mailbox, I was terrified - “what the hell have I done? Mailing illegal drugs through USPS is a huge crime!” (This was circa 1978, so such things were indeed considered felonious and likely to be prosecuted.)
Anyway, the FBI never came a-knocking, so I guess I got away with it. But what a dumb-ass thing to do!
Maybe not as exotic as some, but when I was attending ET “A” school in Great Lakes, IL, I’d send a Brailled letter to the eventual kaylasmom every week in an unsealed manila envelope marked with “Free Matter for the Blind” written on it where postage would normally go. The weird thing was that twice a month, I’d include five $20 bills from when I cashed my paycheck. Still unsealed.
I mailed a blood sample (my blood) encased in dry ice to a lab in MA one year. That was entertaining to prep and I was left with quite a bit of dry ice to play with. I’m also one to mail dirty laundry home from other places so I have room in my luggage for purchases. And that dirty laundry is truly dirty, smelling of sweat, oil, brake dust and who knows what else. I feel a bit sorry for the postal carriers who deal with it. I mailed homemade alcohol across the country to friends and then discovered that we are no longer allowed to do that (mea culpa).
I can’t beat the op; never mailed a live or dead animal. But I once found a small toy that emitted a low wail when turned over. I put it in a small box and mailed it as a joke to a friend. But I punched holes in the box as though there was a live animal inside. My friend told me that the postman was spooked and said there might be a live animal inside.
Back in the day, there were these single page letters on very flimsy paper (almost onion skin weight) called aerograms. The word aerogram was printed along the edge. I made up a facsimile except it was in the shape of a parallelogram and so labeled. I mailed it to a friend who was at lest somewhat amused.
Never mailed anything weird myself but here’s an unboxing video of a live black mamba. It was clearly shipped via some parcel service, not sure which one.
Goddamn fat fingers. “Mailed a card.”