PSA: If you're ever sending flour through the mail...

[Pat]

Ok, this doesn't fit anywhere, but I had to share. It reminded me of passing along heirloom seeds at the MNO in little plastic baggies. LOL

This was originally posted on MDC:

PSA: If you're ever sending flour through the mail...
...be sure to seal it tightly in a ziploc bag!

Otherwise the post office goes a little crazy when they see "white powder" leaking out of the box.

The story from my end:

Kathy from this board offered to mail me some light buckwheat flour. I knew she sent it out last Friday. So on Monday afternoon, my doorbell rings and it's our mail-carrier-lady at the door. She hands me a box and says, "Your package created quite a stir down at the post office. It had to be quarantined and tested because there was white powder leaking out." She points to the taped bottom edge of the box where there is a bunch of white powder caught up in the clear packing tape.

Feeling like I'm being accused of something terrible, I quickly say "Oh my gosh! It's just buckwheat flour. I can't have regular wheat so my friend got my some buckwheat flour from Maine!"

Mail-carrier-lady says, "Yeah, that's what the lab report said. Flour." She points to Kathy's name and return address on the label and says, "As far as I know, most Anthrax terrorists don't use a return address." She seems very amused by the whole thing.

She then asks if I'm gluten-intolerant, and proceeds to stand on my front porch for half an hour telling me all about her medical problems and how she's being tested for gluten intolerance, and asking me what I eat, etc. I try to tell her everything useful I can think to tell her about gluten intolerance and allergies and leaky gut and digestive enzymes and so on. I can't help but think that there are no coincidences, and maybe the whole purpose of the flour leaking out was for me to have this conversation with this women, to help her.

Kathy will have to tell you the story from her end. We have been laughing all week about the leaky flour box.


ROFLOL Here is the rest of the story, from Kathy:

I'm asleep (it is morning after all) and the phone rings at 5:30am. DH is on night shift so I assume it's him telling me he's working late or something. And some guy says his name and he's a postal inspector in Chicago. I said, "And you're calling me at 5:30 in the morning?" (I was slightly out of it, to say the least). And he says, very seriously, "When a white powder is leaking out of a box, ma'am, we'll call at whatever time we need to" (or something to that effect).

And I start babbling, "But it's buckwheat flour. I got it in NY, and I was mailing it to my gluten-intolerant friend in Michigan, and it must have broke..." And he said that was fine, they had to check it out. I thought it was pretty good that they tracked me down so easily. And I guess I'm glad I put my return address on it, or else WildIris never would have gotten the flour! It would have ended up on some HazMat pile with a man in an EnviroSuit carefully putting red biohazard labels all over it!!

ETA, there is more.
I should add that yesterday I was talking on the phone to a Celiac friend who lives here in the same small Michigan town as me, and I started to tell her about how the mail-carrier-lady showed up at my door with the box-- when before I could even get the story out, my friend interrupted me and said, "The box with the white powder? That was YOU?"

Somehow she had already heard about it! News travels fast in a small town. I half expected to see it in the paper this week, but nope, nothing yet.

I'm all out of safe (corn free) coffee and was half considering ordering some directly from Costa Rica, but now I'm scared of what the postal people might think. First a box leaking white powder...then a mysterious little package from Costa Rica... my name might get put onto a watch list somewhere.

Pat

[Karen Shattuck]

LOL that was great!

Some one needs to send her some organic dried herbs next!!!LOL

I tried to ship some presents home to family once and had some great sturdy beer boxes from Moving. Well the PO clerk was in shock I would try to send that box through the mail. I had to wrap it in brown paper so no beer labes could be seen. So much for trying not to waste.....