The package arrived in the mail with a brief note.
“There are lots of chicks out there,” read the missive from a Washington, D.C., woman’s ex-boyfriend. And in the box were 15 fluffy, yellow baby chickens.
It could have been worse, perhaps, if the man had been thinking about the fish-in-the-sea idiom.
She told the postman she was going to throw them away, but he volunteered to take them off her hands and delivered them to the Washington Humane Society, where workers gave them to the Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary in Maryland, according to the group’s Facebook page.
“Unbelievably, it is legal to ship baby chicks in the regular mail,” reads a post, with photos of the tiny birds. The feathered mail specimens were healthy, save for one with an injured leg. Six have found a permanent home at the Peaceful Fields Sanctuary in Virginia and the rest will stay at Poplar Spring.
The U.S. Postal Service posts its rules for mailing live birds on its website.
