For most of us, shipping items through the mail or through express mail services tends to be a pretty simple task. When it comes to the majority of mail, letters and bills along with business packages, holiday gifts and care packages make up the bulk of what’s sent. But those everyday items are too mundane for some people, who instead choose to send – or attempt to send – much more exotic and dangerous items through the mail.

Live animals are the most prevalent example of odd things being shipped. In 2006, the Georgia Aquarium received two male and two female whale sharks through UPS. Whale sharks are the largest fish on the planet, and can grow to more than 40 feet long. Shipping involved the use of a B-747 transport airliner to move the sharks from Taiwan to Georgia, with a brief stop in Alaska along the way.

Not to be outdone by UPS, in 2010 FedEx shipped more than 25,000 sea turtles eggs from northern Mexico to the eastern Florida coast. The shipment protected the eggs from a recent oil spill in the Gulf region.

Apparently, live animals are quite popular items to be shipped through the mail. Other examples of animals being shipped include:

• African killer bees
• Boa constrictors
• Frogs
• Lobsters
• Worms
• Pandas
• Penguins
• Sea Otters
• Eagles
• A rhino
• An alligator

All of these “items” aren’t shipped legally, but that hasn’t stopped determined people from attempting it. Unfortunately, the tip-off that something’s amiss is usually a broken container, meaning hazard control workers are called in to deal with the free animals.

In addition to live animals, dead animals are a popular mailing item. Hunters have tried to send deer corpses through the UPS. Shipping animal blood, dead pigs and dead sharks has also been attempted. The would-be senders of these items invariably fail in their mission because the smell of decaying flesh alerts workers to the material located within.

Chemicals are another strange category of items being shipped. Household chemicals such as bleach and cleaner are frequently sent to and from recent movers in need of cleaning supplies for their new residences. A chemical incident with the UPS involved an attempt to ship chemicals designed to eat through concrete – which created a problem with the concrete UPS floors when the container broke open.

Not all strange items sent through the mail are hazardous. Some harmless, yet odd, examples of items sent include:

•   Large pieces of automobiles sent from mechanics
•   A shipment of over 400,000 daffodils
•   Pieces of the Titanic’s hull
•   “Spirit of Liberty” Bell, weighing in at 3,000 pounds
•   A Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopter, which weighed 11,000 pounds
•   An eight-ton statue of Jose P. Rizal, a hero of the 1896 Filipino revolution against Spain

References:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/3541145.html
http://www.pressroom.ups.com/Press+Releases/Archive/2006/Q2/Georgia+Aquarium+Whale+Sharks+Receive+Special+UPS+Delivery
http://about.fedex.designcdt.com/our_company/company_information/fedex_history/unusual_shipments