“Good morning, this is the post office, just calling to let you know your baby chicks are here for pick up.” The woman who left this message early on a Tuesday morning has a sing-song voice, like someone calling to say you’ve won a prize. Or, in this case, that they can’t wait to present you with an opaque cardboard box, peppered with air holes, that’s making a cacophonous peeping noise. I show up at the post office to collect the birds, which I can hear coming from the back room long before I see them. I ask the clerk whether she gets chick shipments a lot. “Oh all the time,” she says. “I just love it.”
Every year, starting at the end of winter and continuing into the fall, millions of chicks make their way to new homes under the care of post offices just like this one near Portland, Oregon. In fact, the post office has officially been mailing out poultry and select other live animals like bees, snails, scorpions, goldfish, “small, harmless, cold-blooded animals,” and even baby alligators—so long as they’re under 20 inches—to people all over the country since 1918.