You’d see the neighbors going to their mail boxes wearing rubber gloves and surgical masks. The post office where I normally mail things off had been evacuated and inspected because they found some white powder in an envelope.
Around that time my mom called and asked if I got the box of cookies she had sent. I explained that mail was getting delayed because of the anthrax thing, and that I was sure I would get it eventually.
Sure enough, 3 weeks went by and I came home from work to find a box on our front porch. The box looked as though it had been kicked from Indiana to Maryland, all bashed in, dirty, bunch of rubber stamp marks on it, and a big sticker that said “IRRADIATED”.
Lovely! Turns out that my mom had packed her delicious powdered sugar cookies wrapped in wax paper (I didn’t even know they made wax paper anymore), and some of that nice white powder had sprinkled out of the box and probably sent the post office into fits of mass decontamination and frenzy.
I wonder how many people had to be hospitalized for sugar cookies.
While I’m sure they were perfectly safe to eat, I just picked up the box (with my rubber gloves and surgical mask on) and dumped the entire thing in the trash.
I called and told her I got the cookies, and suggested that she invest in some ziplock bags next time.
